Pooch's April Update

Wow, April was LOONY. Lockdown, work was crazy, working from home and everything else that was going on.

And I am massively delayed in getting this blog post up, so sorry for that. But, I did lots of painting and preparation, so that makes up for it right?

1. Paint a Kings of War Army- In progress!
This month was pretty monumental in making progress onto finishing the goblins. Excitingly, this month also was the start of me basing them too. I used one of the Green Stuff world rollers, and a variety of other pieces to make the bases.

I am ridiculously happy with the finished product, here is my first legion of Goblins.:

The legion base, fully painted.

The base, loaded with Goblins

Close up on the 3d printed Dwarf statue

More pictures next month, when I have hopefully finished the whole army......

2. Create a table of terrain to support a game

No progress, I looked at the packets of terrain I had to build, and then promptly put it at the bottom of the queue. I bought some more stuff to add to it tho.... so that counts as progress?

3. Complete the 6mm Apocalypse Challenge- In progress!
Well, another month, and again, I finished up the 6mm in the first few days. I mean, finishing it on day 3 was slow for me!

This month it is 3 Leman Russ, a third Hellhound, a Salamander Scout Vehicle (converted from a spare hull, and 3d printed crew), and a base of Rough Riders (who are ABSOLUTE TRASH).

This month's painting, I have been sure to remember to put them all in this time!

Close up of my converted Salamander Scout Vehicle

Oh, and I repainted the Valkyrie objective, and finished up a wrecked Warlord Titan head from Adeptus Titanicus!

And that's 200 PL of Imperial Guard!

But then McZ said "why don't we just paint another 50 PL? And so I did:

"It's a Baneblade!"

4. Run a narrative campaign for the group

Planning is well underway, but the whole lockdown thing means that no progress so far.

5. Add a new detachment to one of my 40k armies (In progress!)

Add to the Death Guard? Nope!

Add to the Krieg? Nope!

Add to the Storm Lords? Absolutely.

And here is the first model completed for it, a Space Marine Lieutenant. Made from a spare Space Marine hero, with parts out of my bits box. And a beaky helmet, because it is known that they are the coolest. It's missing a tuft from the base, but I am short on stock (and can't remember which tuft it is that I need to order!)

6. Buy a starter box and paint all of it

Nothing further here, I haven't seen a starter box that tempts me. Any ideas?


7. Paint a Space Marine Heroes Series (In progress)

Wait, more progress here too? I managed to get my hands on 8 of the Space Marine Heroes Series 3 blind boxes, in the hope that I would get one of each of the six different variant models. I got 5 of the 6. Damnit!

Still, I painted the 5 I did get, while I wait for the 6th to arrive from eBay....

The completed 5- more yellowy in this photo than in person!

Nurgling along for the ride doing some flailing

8. Update a 15mm Napoleonic army for Blackpowder

Nothing further here.... Not even the lockdown could make me start this one yet!

9. Paint a stand alone force- DONE (again)

I have two young kids, therefore Frozen is a feature of my household. Last year I bought myself some figures to make a Frostgrave warband, loosely based off the movie Frozen. And in lockdown, I finally actually did something about it!

The whole warband!

The infantry- Fireforge Scandianvians

The unique infantry- Priest, Marksman, Ranger, Barbarian, Thief. All potential RPG characters for me, who have now found a home!

The main characters, and two very large dogs!

Elsa and Anna, who got a new ice sword to match the one she got in the second movie.

And Olaf, in the sculpting stage

And painted!

10. Update and improve a table of terrain- DONE

The Wild West town of Whisper Creek has slowly been expanding over the past couple of years as I add more and more of the exceptional 4ground models into my collection. At the start of lockdown I had a bunch of boxes of kits staring at me, and they had been staring at me for the better part of a year (if not two!), so over Easter I built everything I had to do for my Wild West town!

Here are some snapshots of two of the most impressive parts of that, the Sassy Gal Saloon, and the passenger train.

Three stories of awesome

Leadlight windows!

Interior detail!

Stairs!

Yes, you can do circles in laser cut MDF!

This is a big locomotive, and was a complex build

Carriages!

I will be getting all of this out onto the table for the narrative campaign (whenever we are both able to run it, and can schedule it in!), so will make sure to have some much better pictures then.

11. Paint a Flames of War Army (In progress)

A short update on my US paras. Basically it amounts to SIX new infantry stands painted. Not exactly monumental, but progress none the less. The issue is waiting for more models to arrive!

No new picture, because they look EXACTLY the same as the ones you saw last month....

12. Finish what I should have finished last year- DONE (again)

This one is some more 15mm vehicles, 3 Panthers in fact which I was meant to have done for the DDay game we had last year. Nice and simple!

And that's it, May will be equally big, I promise!

Pooch

Remember to wash your hands, Morty is watching.....

Uparmoured Executive

It's been a surprisingly productive week that wasn't really looking that promising about Thursday!

Deathwatch Uparmoured Executive

I had pondered aloud at some point that some Terminator characters for my Deathwatch would be really useful - delivering characters to support my Kill Teams isn't the easiest thing to do. As I'm working on some Primaris Kill Teams, some teleporting characters seemed like they could be VERY handy.

Board Meeting of the Uparmoured Executive

Space Marine Hero - Deathwatch Captain

Pooch provided me with this epic Captain model as he picked up a spare in the Space Marine Heroes collectible series. It's a fab model and I love the pose. 

Terminator Librarian

I have discovered when playing with my Deathwatch that the psychic power 'Null Zone' means that you can really wreck things like Hive Tyrants with boltguns when their invulnerable save goes away. This guy is for delivering that!

Anniversary model - Space Marine Chaplain

 I lucked out here. So lucked out. I didn't manage to actually get one of these when the promotion was on, but one of my DnD group picked up two and graciously sent one my way. On top of that, after a con a couple of years ago, one of the players there gave me a Forge World Red Scorpions shoulderpad and that wound up on this guy. And he looks AMAZING.

Deathwatch Biker Sergeant

Lastly a third DW biker meaning that I can run a bike squad if I want to. It is emblematic of one thing that vexes me about the DW lists vs fluff. I should be able to build a Kill Team made up only of bikers and jump pack marines (the book describes it in the fluff!) but because I must include 5 bog standard Marines in the KT, it doesn't quite work. It's a shame really because it would be really fun to have one of those.

Kings of War - Order of the Green Lady

 

And lo! After much wailing and gnashing of teeth, the last base of Knights was completed and rebased for Kings of War. This base is a unit of the Order of Redemption. The heaviest and most powerful of the knight units in the list. This base alone clocks in at 250 points before I tack on a magic item to make them the hardest hitting unit I can use. 

There are still a few bits to finish - I think the Oathmark Elven light infantry is out now (or at least very soon) and that'll be the last two unit bases to do. 

Next Time

I haven't got into my 6mm for May yet so I need to get those done and finish up my Beast of Nature for my Kings of War army. I've got a tiny bit of rebasing to do on my StuGs but they've all been scrimmed now too, which I'm really happy with to give them a bit more texture. So photos of them next week. And the hope that as NZ moves towards an even less restrictive lockdown that some of this stuff might be on the table soon!  

Statue bro?

So we begin this week's achievements with maybe the easiest painting / modelling project that anyone ever undertakes - making some statues out of old models. I've had a few of these old 1st edition multi-part Chaos Warriors hanging around in a bag for precisely this purpose for way too long. So I did them. They're definitely this week's 'Drawer of Shame' contribution!

They'll go in with my 40K terrain which, given that it's mostly made up of ruins, also works well for Frostgrave! That's where these chaps will likely see service. They do have the advantage of being quite big and so are actually hideable behind for most normal scale 28mm models which is kind of neat.

Dracula's America
The Crossroads Cult, that I have played in all our previous games of DracAm has been....a bit iffy for me. The summoning rules seem really good when you can have two extra d10 level models on board, especially in a one off game, at one time!

So I dug into my old box of Malifaux models to see what else I could come up with and the answer, amazingly, seems to be the Congregation posse. To be quite honest it's mostly been about the fact that Marcus makes an excellent Hougan and the Malifaux Razorspine Rattler will be an epic Temple Snake.

I've painted up Marcus and Miranda as the Hougan and Vessel to lead the posse. Marcus is a great model and while Miranda is a bit bland, she kind of feels like the pose is right!

Then I added two M&SU Miners as my zombi (with a third one up my sleeve if I need it) because I decided to go for the classic 'mind control' voodoo version of zombies, rather than undead. Also the aforementioned Razorspine, that didn't even get repainted. I spent a lot of time getting the diamondback pattern on there and by god was it staying there.

And  finally, three gunfighters - Hans, the Convict Gunslinger and Rusty Alice. I always loved the insane 'sniper' rifle that Hans has and giving the gunslinger Prison Orange pants was too good an opportunity to pass up.

Next Time
This month's contribution to the Stupid. I've got a lot of the base coats on so just have to do all the highlights. Towers of Skulls are *not* helpful for this. Also I've block painted the last of the knights for my KoW army so they should get done too. I've got another half a dozen or so Malifaux Arcanist models as well that might be able to do duty as a different posse in DracAm - probably Tong as most of them are waving around giant hammers - so they might find their way towards the painting table too. 

Once more into the backlog!

I've been doing all sorts of random stuff this last week and finally (FINALLY) done some work on some things that have been waiting far far too long for progress.

Khemrians

I bought these direct from GW in the UK more than a decade ago to use as a Necromantic warband in Mordheim and I think I might have played them once or twice. They've been used as a Wizgang in Frostgrave and I have most of the parts for a decent KoW Vanguard list too. I'd just like to hunt down a couple of the classic Ushabti to finish that up. They've had a touch up of the paint over the last week and I finished up the swarms, a couple of new skeletons and a pair of giant spiders.

The spiders are also from the Drawer of Shame. They're the mounts for the current generation of Forest Goblin Spider Riders and we picked up a bunch from some place at some time and shared them out amongst the nerds. These have been waiting for AGES to get done and will serve as proxies for scorpions. Because both are arachnids. That's my story and I'm sticking to it. 

Brotherhood
Oh my goodness. I did it. Finally. I painted some knights!!!

So these are the two regiments of the 'Order of the Brotherhood.' Basically my line cavalry. I can't believe it took me this long to get it done. Ugh. So finishing this army won't take too long now.

I also painted these 'Order of the Forsaken' Pegasus knights too. They're super cool. The resin Pegasi from Fireforge are kind of rage inducing - they're super gappy - but an insane amount of filler largely fixes that problem.

Finally, I painted an 'Avatar of the Green Lady.' I'm not crazy on Mantic's figure and honestly, I'm not super crazy on this Nolzur's model either - the details are really shallow (especially on the face and hands) but it's a good stand in until somewhere along the way I can pick up an old Wood Elf Spellweaver to take it's place.

Deathwatch
And just because I felt like doing them, a couple of Vanguard marines for my Deathwatch. This is part of an evolving plan to redesign the army a little to emphasise the Primaris Kill Teams and use my Veterans as a more rapid strike unit. 

And from the Drawer of Shame
The only Protectorate of Menoth model I own that I hadn't painted.

At some point I acquired a second Reclaimer to run an old High Reclaimer Theme Force. Which, as you can imagine given that this one just got painted, NEVER got used. Whoops.

Next Time
I'm working on a new warband for Dracula's America using my old Malifaux models and am trying to finish up the last two things for my Brotherhood army - a regiment of the 'Order of Redemption' and a 'Beast of Nature.' It's also going to be May, which means more work on the Stupid. Pooch and I are going to hit 100 PL again in May because why not? That'll close out my Khorne, which I'm quite excited about.  

From the Drawer of Shame and other places

So with lockdown still in full effect it's really just been more painting for the last week. So much more painting. But while this last week has been a bit of a scattergun approach to what I've been working on, it has been surprisingly productive.

I started working on some of the bits that have been in the Drawer of Shame (admit it, you've all got one) for too long and, as there are still a few projects on the list from there, I'm going to keep trying to plough away through them.

From the Drawer of Shame
First off, from my 'why didn't I just finish these when I got them?' category, some Foundry Peons that go in with my Wild West Mexican collection. I already have two with cane knives and these two have been sitting around since goodness knows when. Since I had the white paint out, I smashed them out.

Some time ago I also picked up some rooftop / walkway scatter that wasn't planter boxes for my sci-fi table. I primed it with the remnant of a white primer can and finally got off my chuff and put some actual paint on them. The finish is a bit ropey as I wound up having to put a base coat on with some artists acrylic I usually use for making snow but they'll do until I can get some 400 grit sandpaper and tidy them up a little bit on the really big flat surfaces. I think some branding for the vending machines is also required so will get to work on how to do that.

And actual projects!
This next beastie is a rescue project I've blogged in the past. This Imperial Guard Basilisk is the kind of artillery that should never be on table in a tabletop game, but is too cool not to have. I've replaced the hatch, added the stubber and rails at the back and filled and smoothed out some of the side panels where the original owner attached accessories with plastic glue (please, God, no) before giving it the dark green and mustard yellow tiger stripes that are common to all my Guard armour.

I love that it has a crew complement too and instead of attaching the dozer blade to the front I fitted it to the rear, like a proper recoil spade. Also chalk up a goal of 'add something to a 40K army for April!

I've also been at work on my 15mm World War II collections as well. I've decided to split my Late War up into a StuG company that will be painted for summer and set for the Western Front and Italy, and a Grenadier company that will take up the core bits of my 653 Schwere Panzerjager Abteilung, and will be painted for winter and set for the Eastern Front.  This has meant starting some serious TLC and repair work on the StuGs first and part of that is adding some scrim to the vehicles to give them a bit more texture.

I started with the big guns, the Nashorns and the Firefly, just to see how it would come out. I like the finish of the bushy brush foliage covering the front plate so will be doing something (although probably a bit less seriously, as they're less ambushy) similar on the StuGs.

Next Time
I have *actually* started painting my Knights! I know! I'm as amazed as anyone. So they'll get done, along with some Deathwatch, both of which are nearing completion and I've got a couple more things from the Drawer of Shame that are going to get done. And then I might have to go back to the Drawer of Shame and see what else is in there that could go into the rotation.

Happy Easter Painting!

It's been a busy few days of the long weekend doing work around the house and in the garden so haven't spent as much time as I wanted to painting but I did get through a couple of things this week.

World Eaters
So. Much. White. But I love how it looks and will be an awesome contrast to the red of the daemons.

There's more 6mm to come next week, since Pooch and I agreed (mostly because I've been painting stuff I assumed was in my 50 PL quota that hasn't been there!) to do an extra 50 bonus points in April because of lockdown. :) So there'll be a full 100 PL next week - made up of most of the rest of the Khornate daemons. After that, it's going to be two months of wrapping up the Khorne models to start on part II of the project - Death Guard!

Treeman
So the greater Earth Elemental is done.

I still really love this model and can't wait to have him on the table. Once I finish up the knights (...) I'll still need to get a set of Warlord treemen for the regular size Earth Elementals and I think some of the Oathmark Light Elven Infantry to build up as a proxy for the Naiad Ensnarers and Heartpiercers.

Man I cannot wait to get back to gaming. I am honestly really looking forward to putting some of this hard work to use on the table eh? I'm starting to think that I should clear off the table o'projects and do a bit of solo gaming. Might encourage me to finish some things as well.

Next Time
The last of April's Stupid and finally getting back into painting some 40K. Yep. I'm STILL putting off painting my last few Teutonic Knights. Man I am terrible. I might do the Pegasus base now to get back into the groove of doing the white and use that as the motivator to finish them.

Pooch's March 2020 update

Wow.

March.

Just, wow.

Super busy on the work front, then add into that a global pandemic and lockdown, which makes the work front MORE busy! But, painting is one of my relaxation tools, so I did manage to still get some things done.

1. Paint a Kings of War Army- In progress!
I hadn't made much progress here, but then had a sudden burst of "maybe I should actually get some of this done" which got me to finish up a few different things.....

Goblins!

Mawpup launcher. Or, a kiddie catcher style cart filled with Squigs.

Goblin Shaman, and Goblin Assassin

And a goblin. Riding on a sentient mushroom, being attached by tiny mushrooms, and defending a large mushroom from a different flying mushroom. Doesn't get much more goblin than that!

2. Create a table of terrain to support a game

No progress.

3. Complete the 6mm Apocalypse Challenge- In progress!
So I am really getting into the habit of finishing these as soon as the month begins- this month's went from undercoated to painted on the 1st of March!

This month is a more eclectic mix of things, Basilisks, Hellhounds, a Primaris Psyker and a Stormtrooper squad in a Valkyrie! The Valkyrie and Stormtroopers are 3d prints from Thingiverse, and the remainder are from the original Epic game.

50 PL of awesome! Well, except for the Psyker who is hiding somewhere....

Three old school Basilisks

One very cool 3d printed Valkyrie

Two super old school Hellhounds.

Next up? Tanks!

4. Run a narrative campaign for the group

Nothing further here....

5. Add a new detachment to one of my 40k armies

Nothing further here....

6. Buy a starter box and paint all of it

Nothing further here....

7. Paint a Space Marine Heroes Series

I bought some! But haven't started painting them....

8. Update a 15mm Napoleonic army for Blackpowder

Nothing further here....

9. Paint a stand alone force- DONE

10. Update and improve a table of terrain

Nothing further here....

11. Paint a Flames of War Army (NEW)

Month two of the swapped out goal, and this is the place I actually managed to make the most progress.

I have managed to finish up a bunch of infantry, a mortar platoon and a recce jeep patrol, bringing the total amount completed to 44 points!

My US Para army so far.....

Recon Jeeps! Air recognition panel made from Greenstuff, just to show who the command jeep is

Mortar Platoon, because never leave home without 81mm goodness

12. Finish what I should have finished last year- DONE

And that's it!

Pooch

Remember to wash your hands, Morty is watching.....

Video games are the enemies of productivity!

I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that I picked up some of the releases from the Nolzur's Marvellous Miniatures range and so I've been working on those for my Kings of War Brotherhood Order of the Green Lady army. I've always wanted this army to be more "European" than pure fantasy, given that it's based on my old Impetus Teutonic Order army so I've made some fun choices. 

I finished up a Stag, who'll be standing in for the Unicorn in the list. It's a quadruped. It has horns. It fits better to. It's a nice little model once the mould lines came off. 

And in my favourite purchase of the last little while, a Nolzur's Treant! This guy is going to be the Titan in this army, standing in for a Greater Earth Elemental. I watched a great video on YouTube, from Devious Dungeons Painting, about painting this Treant and adding the clump foliage and I love how it's coming together. I still need to do some work highlighting the beard, colour matching it to the foliage (once the glue dries....) and making up the base, but it's a great model and will fit in super well with the army.

And in other sweet news, Warlord Games have done some smaller Treemen for their Halfling range, so I'll be able to do the regular Earth Elementals as Treemen as well. Super happy about that.

I also got the Order of the Forsaken monstrous cavalry built, filled and based, ready for priming. 

I'm glad I split one off to be a hero on his own base as I'm not sure I could have fitted all three on a 120mm long base! 

The Stupid

I've been slowly prepping for month 4 of the Stupid. It's going to be a bit of slog this time around to really put a dent in the World Eaters. I might be being a bit sneaky and going over my 50PL for this month though. The chap in the bottom left corner is going to be Kharn the Betrayer, who clocks in at a cool 11 PL by himself. 

This month has made me wonder about the pointing in Apocalypse though. 10 Berserkers is 8 PL but a Rhino is 5PL. 5?? For a combi Bolter and a transport capacity. Pooch and I have been comparing this to something in his Month 3 release and we're both a bit....confused.

Next Time
I'll definitely finish up the Treeman because he's cool and then, honestly, I don't know. I'm really going to have to get onto the rest of the Knights from that army otherwise they'll never get done. And maybe getting into my Aussies. Although I'll have to stop playing video games if that's going to get done.