Welcome to June! May was busy and so I ended up…
Wait. That picture seems… different to last month. Something is off. It’s almost tidy.
Oh yeah – I upgraded my office/hobby room with a new piece of furniture. I’m probably going to do a little thing on it (mostly because I love it) but it’s an Eket setup to give me a little more storage space.
Project 365
So lets take a look at the numbers for May.
Painted: 30
Description | Maker | Number |
British Infantry | Empress | 19 |
Pulp Agent | Wargames Illustrated | 1 |
Swashbuckler | Wargames Foundry | 2 |
Ogroid Myrmidon | GW | 1 |
Warcry Catacombs Terrain | GW | 7 |
Purchased: 6
Description | Maker | Number |
Dark Elf Shadowblade | GW | 1 |
Dark Elf Sorceress | GW | 1 |
Undead Vampire Lord | GW | 1 |
Galen ven Denst | GW | 1 |
Doralia ven Denst | GW | 1 |
Warsong Revenant | GW | 1 |
Well good news! I painted more than I bought (by a fair chunk). I missed my goal by 1 (and more until I did my terrain painting on Monday night). On the other hand, the month was quite busy for work, I had some pretty bad brain days which made painting hard to do and A LOT of time was spent assembling models (thanks to Cursed City).
PROJECT Database
And so, having painted some terrain for a game, I have triggered a trap in my work. To make sure my data is correct, I now need to add all of my terrain to the database to bring the overall number of items up to the correct level, letting my overall completion percentage actually be accurate.
I’m setting up another table in the database and will start filling it with all the various items. The main problem with terrain vs miniatures is going to be cataloguing it, tying an entry in the database to the actual item. Part of me is tempted to start assembling asset tags to stick to the bottom of them, although I fear that may be a step too far.
PROJECT FANTASY
Although the painting numbers aren’t the highest, I think the main focus this month was fantasy. This is because there has been a lot of assembly this month, both starting from scratch but also finishing off some partial assemblies that have been sat around.
First up we have the entirety of Cursed City. 50 models and 10 tokens is a pretty hefty addition, and took me a while to build and then undercoat. These are going to be painted up as part of the Battered Brush challenge Games Workshop York is running in June (which due to the Dastardly Regular Opponent being based there is going to drag me in to it).
I actually have some duplicate models to assemble as well, three of the posing vampires and the heroic captain. I’m still debating my exact plans for how to assemble them, but I’m thinking of some weapon swaps for the vampires (using some Elven weapons I have) while the Captain might get a headswap and weapon tweak.
As part of my tidying up, I bit the bullet and finished off my Chaos Lord’s assembly. This required an evening of green-stuffing fun to rebuild a hand at the join between the arm and the Keeper of Secrets spear I was using. After originally doing it with way too much greenstuff (so that it looked like it had swollen up) I had to frantically trim big chunks of it away as it started to set. However, now that it’s been done and undercoated, I’m really happy with how it’s turned out. More pictures of the process once I finish him off.
And speaking of green stuffing, I also finished off building my Keeper of Secrets. From the start, I’ve always declared how much I dislike the crab claws. As I was building her as a Warrior Queen turned Greater Demon, I wanted to use weapons on all four arms. this required a little bit of cutting and green stuffing repair work to the arms, covering up the joins between the hand and the crab claw wrist. I had planned to be a little bit more experimental, bringing the shield a little closer to the body. However, when I got round to actually assembling, I decided not to risk it; the default pose is perfectly suited for the pose of the giant warrior creature casually advancing on her opponent. The model is now undercoated and at some point, I’ll get round to painting her.
The final bit of assembly and mod work for this month was the Soulblight Vampire Lord. I adore this model but I thought the bats in the hair were a little over the top. It was also confirmed when, upon assembling the model, I realised the larger base was only need to make sure the bats in hair actually fitted. Wanting this lord to fit with the Crimson Court band I got last month, I decided to give her a haircut – of course, this required me to then add some tips to the hair. My first few attempt was purely green stuff (as you can see above) but I could get the detail I wanted. Because of this, I decided to instead use some donor parts from some left over Dark Elf pieces, giving me the sharp points and meaning I only had to fill in the gaps with liquid green stuff. Now she’s undercoated, I’m really happy with her. You’ll see the results once I get to painting my vampires.
Now for painting, I finally took a look at my Swashbucklers. Getting the first two painted up as a test, I’m really happy with the models, perfectly suited for what I have in mind for the Swordmasters in my setting. I am looking forward to getting the rest painted up and ready to be used in games moving forward.
The other fantasy painting was the Ogroid Myrmidon. This, I believe, is the single largest model I’ve painted so far. He’s a glorious model, a Minotaur like creature with shield and spear that towers over it’s opponents. It took me a couple of days to paint him up, but I love how he looks and I’m really excited to get him on the table. More details and photos once I finish the rest of my half naked Chaos followers.
And yes! Terrain! During my week off (which I’m currently on) I decided to arrange a game with the Dastardly Regular Opponent so we could roll some dice. I’ll talk about all the joys of Open Combat (the ruleset we used) in the battle report but more importantly, OH MAN, it’s nice having painted terrain to play over it. As much as I dislike how much time it takes and how much it murders my paint brushes with slapping paint all over it (not helped by my brain preferring to work from a black undercoat) but on the plus side, I really like how it’s turned out. Now I just have to work on the rest…
Uh oh.
PROJECT WW2
Offt okay. So I am very close to finishing off my Brits but man it’s a bit of a slog. I don’t know if it was just this month or if I’m getting bored of painting green and brown but it was hard work kicking my way through the rest of the figures.
That said, I did rather enjoy converting and assembling my sneaky recce boys. I really like the camp comforter look and, with several duplicate figures, I decided to make some special figures. As well as the green-stuff’d cap, I also painted their faces with black contrast to tone it down and look like it had been blackened prior to some sneaky business.
As well as the recce boys, I also finished off a few extra riflemen, a pair of prone support teams (giving me an extra PIAT and Bren gun), the spotters for my Vickers guns, four SMG soldiers and Agent Carter. This is the Wargames Illustrated “Pulp Agent” but lets be fair, it’s obvious who it is. I’m… Not Really a fan of this model. It’s definitely a much more heroic/pulp figure, with different proportions that don’t quite fit my painting style. I would definitely love a version of this character with the same style as the Paul Hicks Brits, but for now she’ll work as a little bit of fun.
In terms of the project, I now have two vickers machine guns, two radio teams and a platoon of Churchills to do to finish off the projects. With lockdown easing, it’s likely that soon my British will be clashing with Germans under the control of the Dastardly/Creative Regular opponents.
That’s it for this month’s update, I’ll see you in a month!