2013 achievements and what's coming in 2014

Once again I had a very busy December, though because we stayed in town this year and have had our first child, that business was having a very proper Christmas setup and a bunch of hobby time catch up!

I have to say, 2013 was another amazing year!  Due to personal commitments I didn't get as much gaming time for tournaments and such, but that's OK - becoming a father means I am going to have to sacrifice those types of things more often so best get used to it! I managed to make it to four blood bowl tournaments this year and also ran one for the first time - I got the two in that mattered the most (Zlurpeebowl and Lakeside) and managed to win the Best Appearance trophy at ZBIX.

On to other matters - first up my planned items for 2013

Of the 3 mentioned projects I was planning to attempt this year, I completed 1 - the necromunda walkways. In terms of more necromunda stuff I did get some dark vengeance cultists converted as a Redemptionist gang and am very happy with them. Once Ric @ Ricalope puts up a tutorial I plan to give it a go using his method for painting these guys - they have the same bases as my Flesh Tearers and will fit right in as cultists when using the chaos-y corsair models I built.

I had also been planning to bring my Insane Goblin Posse to Zlurpeebowl and gun for best appearance - CHECK! This required adding something more to the team (required by me) so I got a couple more basic goblins painted up.

I failed completely to paint the Ravenwing at all - partially because I needed a few more bits to finish building but mostly because GW annoyed the hell out of me with some stupid decisions and make me re-evaluate my loyalty.

I failed at painting some of the chaos-y/corsair marines I had built for my raptor legion - solely because the primer went on too thick and obscured some details - however I did get some more raptor legion marines painted and even more assembled.

However I am really happy that I managed to finish up several long outstanding projects

• based some WHQ characters
• finished zombies for Axt
• completed counters for orc blood bowl team
• finished skaven enginseer for hakomike

I managed to paint a lot more than I expected to finish with a new baby - score one for motivation/focus (ie. if I get 20 minutes to paint, spend over 15 of those minutes actually painting)

I currently have 6 terminators in progress for my novamarines - it doesn't look like they will be finished for this year, but they will give me a good start to next and that combined with scaling down the eventual plans means I just want to paint up a second land speeder storm and will consider that army "finished".  I hope to get some games in for 2014 and then may consider putting it up for sale/trade.

Other plans for 2014 include;

• Making the Canadian Open blood bowl tournament bigger and better than ever.  Check out more information on the NAF Canada website or on the NAF forum thread.
• Getting some Deadzone figures painted up.  I plan to start with my plague faction as I have lots of them and some ideas about using staining and washes to get a good effect.
• Painting up the Redemptionist cultists if Rics tutorial is done this year.
• I have some plans for a couple blood bowl teams to increase what I can use.  One is a proper team to build and paint as a themed counts as Necromantic team.  The other is a very quick & funny themed Ogre team.
• Finishing up the Novamarines as mentioned above and getting some games in with them.
• Once my FOLDIO lightbox arrives, getting serious about nice pictures for the blog and starting to go through my painted stuff bit by bit.

Happy New Year to my followers and best wishes for a great 2014!

(MFP) must finish project #1 - finally complete!

FINALLY finished.  Almost three years in the finishing I've got my blood bowl orc team complete. Earlier in December I finished up the reroll counters, the score counter was previously painted and I got it based at the same time and now I've finished the turn counter.

turn marker

I do want to paint the rims of the rest of the team black, so I can fix up their base numbers and add some coloured lines to make the positionals more explicit and to match these bases better.  In the new year I will take some updated team photos.

Even more WHQ monsters

As previously mentioned - I was unsure of my ability to get through a batch of 6 terminators over the christmas holidays, so I had pulled out a few more WHQ monsters to try desperately to reach that painting points goal for 2013.  Up now is the spiders..  +4 PP

no flash

Quickly the recipe was;

• prime them with a necrotic flesh army painter spray
• paint a triangular blend from yellow to reddish on the middle of their body round to the end of the bulb
• paint one segment of the legs red
• paint the pincers/mouth silver
• drybrush black all over
• 2x army painted strong tone on the legs
• paint eyes silver, then lime green

flash

I actually prefer the shot with the flash, it kind of gives the impression of a light being shined on them, and it's definitely easier to see their details.  Also I am looking forward to taking better pictures next year - my parents and brother got us an amazing new camera for christmas with the new baby (including a tripod) and I got myself and my dad a small portable lightbox (FOLDIO on kickstarter - I recommend you check it out, it is an amazing deal!)

minis painted for others... skaven for hakomike!

Continuing the painting point train and also bringing my total for miniatures painted for others this year up to 5 is this skaven model I painted for hakomike. Most of my regular readers will recall the absolutely stunning harlequin that Mike painted for my Necromunda spire brats gang - truly one of my favourite miniatures and a totally gorgeous paint job. I knew my own contribution to him wouldn't be anything like that, but to his eternal credit Mike cares more about the thought and care than the actual results.

This has been a long slog - mostly due to my own painting and other changes in real life getting in the way, but also a lack of fur meant my plans for lots of staining/washes had to take a backseat.  Well almost 2 years later he is finally done!  I am also really happy to hear from Mike that he matches the rest of his skaven army pretty well - so job's a good 'un!

warplock engineer I think??

I originally was jazzed to use a staining method for this guys fur, but he ended up having so little of it, I don't think it has as big an impact (of looking very natural) as I'd hoped for - in the end I am more happy with his weapons' blades & the "warpstone ball" on his backpack, which was simply P3 coal black with mithril silver edging, then a purple wash and then another smaller round of edging and another layer of wash.  It gives it a nice evil looking sheen.  I need to fix up the lenses because I screwed up where the little dot of white goes, but other than that, he is finished and I will be shipping him off to Mike in the new year.

old school talisman

Last night we had a friend over who has recently moved to Denmark for work.  Even though neither he or the wife are really into wargaming or anything he's always up to play a board or card based game (usually it's Citadels) but I have recently introduced my wife to Talisman (I only have the older card based very unbalanced edition) so we pulled it out for a game.

pretty early in the game

I figured I would post this up due to all the WHQ talk and since I pulled out some figures to use instead of the stand-up cards.  I was the Priest and so used my Warrior Priest figure. My wife was the Elf (she didn't like the blue on my Elf Champion so used the Wardancer instead).  Our friend was the Prophetess - I ended up pulling out a dark elf sorceress from my dark elf blood bowl team for his figure (no pic in the link, but a decent pic below).

epic final battle

In the end, our friend destroyed me with the command spell, but couldn't kill off my wife before she made it up to the crown of command square.  I'm not positive of the rules but the game had been going for a while so they just battled it out, with our friend winning the final battle when they each had 1 life left - epic!

More WHQ monsters...

A few more quick PP before the end of the year. As mentioned in my previous post I had assembled these plastic bat miniatures using some old flying base stands and more bases made of washers for my WHQ baddies collection. I definitely don't want any of the monsters to look any better than the characters so for that reason these guys were done with stains/washes mostly similar to the minotaur I just finished.

4 down, 8 to go (and find!)

Really like that I decided to use the clear flying base posts instead of the plain plastic ones that come on their base - it really adds a lot to these figures IMO.

At the same time I got the last 2 goblin spearmen painted up cheaply and based.  My plan is to use a bit of watered down wood stain on them plus the night goblin archers to act as a cheap "dip" and provide some depth to their paint jobs. Quick and easy.

I've pulled out 4 plastic spiders and if I get a chance I will attempt to get them painted with stains/washes. I'm saving the novamarine terminators for my week off since they are a proper batch and will need some focus to accomplish.

WHQ Minotaur #2

Well here is another quick 2 PP.  A while back I picked up a box of WHQ monsters when I spotted it in an old FLGS (two headed dragon) it was both cheap and good value because the bat/spider figs are tough to find alternatives for.

I had packaged off the minotaur along with another fig to Dave at mini painting 4 free.  Unfortunately real life got in the way so after a period of time I just requested he send them back no matter what state they were in. He did mostly finish another figure but this guy just had a coat of black primer.

minotaur #2

I decided he would be easy to finish before year end, especially if I used a mostly wash/stain approach to his skin & fur.  I picked red & purple as colours to add because the other minotaur I have (came painted) has green & blue. I used a washer to make his base as with all my other WHQ monsters.  They are cheap and easy to do with some simple card to make broken up flagstones and a touch of flock.

I wasn't originally planning on it, but getting this guy finished prompted me to pull out the two remaining spear armed goblins I needed to finish to get up to the required 6 and I also started converting and painting the bats from the box.  If I keep several projects going I think I will have a better chance of hitting my year end target.

(MFP) must finish project #1 - 4 down, 1 to go!!

Just a quick one today - finishing up this project dates back to 2010!!  In February of that year, I posted about the figures to finish up - then a bit later I got the snotling score counter painted (but not based). Later in April just before the Challenge of Q'ermitt that year I had painted up 2 more each of blitzers and blockers as well as 3 star players and an apothecary.

I recently received a PM on the talkfantasyfootball forums and one of the members liked my orc team and offered me some free resin cast counters (orcy block dice) he had leftover.  Since those were the counters I couldn't figure out - I was happy to accept and now I have managed to get a quick paint job on them.

orcy block dice counters

Includes 3 reroll counters and a counter I will use for a leader reroll.  I have also gotten the snotling based and begun painting the turn counter - which will "finish" off this project once and for all (I may update the numbers/lettering on the bases at some point in the future)

I'm still gunning for my 2013 painting points goal - other than the counters I have a skaven engineer for hakomike nearly complete, a minotaur for my WHQ baddies nearly complete and 6 novamarines terminators I am going to attempt to finish over the holidays.