Two Things I Need

I need to make this mug idea a reality. (Luckily, it's easy to get a one-off custom mug these days.)

I also need to get this shirt...

All Quiet on the...

I've been quiet the past month, largely because I've been really busy. That's a bit of a "good news/bad news" story. I'll start with the good. A lot of it has been personal & family stuff. Everyone seems to be getting married this Spring/Summer, as well as the usual assortment of other events & activities. I'm even trying to enjoy the outdoors and get a bit more active, too. I'm the crazy old man on a skateboard for the first time in something like 25 years, and I'm finally learning how to swim!

I also finally got back into a long overdue vinyl (multiple) toy commission project. I didn't measure, but he's something like 8"-9" tall.

I'm not sure if I shared the other two before. (I haven't completed no. 03 yet, he's been the big hold-up lately, before I finally decided to go ahead and work on nos. 04 & 05 recently.) They're on my art & toy page. Blog. Whatevs. I also painted a little one for my niece's birthday. She's been repainting Littlest Pet Shop toys (more or less a similar thing) as well as doing a lot of drawing. I had briefly wondered if it was a little too weird/creepy for a young kid, but she's the only reason I know what Five Nights at Freddy's is, so I'm probably safe. :)



So now to the bad news. We have been living in the top two floors of a a duplex for years. Things started off OK, but unfortunately the family below us moved a few years ago, and since then we've had a string of bad tenants living below us, as well as some problems with one of the neighbors. Not minor nuisances - I mean serious threats to health and safety. I feel that we should have called in Exterminatus long ago.

So we are hunting for a single family home. No more mystery tenants and their problems.

Hunting for a rental home sucks.

Of the limited choice available, it boils down to this: you can have a nice house in a shitty school system, or a shitty house in a quality school system. This is something I've never had to deal with until recently. In fact, one of the reasons we live where we currently do is the great schools. Unfortunately, the only options around here leave us at the mercy of sharing a house or apartment with mystery tenants, and that has not been working out.

Naturally I am concerned with how this will impact my gaming hobby. ;) Not that I've gamed much, but I still daydream about that part. We still haven't signed a lease, so there is a lot still up in the air. However, we did find a rare nice home in a good (well, one of the best around, actually) school districts. The problem is... it's small. Probably no gaming table, and I'm not even sure how a painting desk will pan out. I will consider it a challenge in downsizing and efficiency.

Also, moving into a single means my small gaming budget is going to be crunched further. Luckily I think I'm set with quite a bit to paint for a while. In fact, I just scored a rare eBay bargain, and acquired some of the middle-era Citadel metal wight cavalry on plastic skeletal horses, and the all metal mounted wight lord.

Lastly, I have been feeling the itch to start a very small scale sci-fi skirmishing project. I've been envying a lot of the oldschool Rogue Trader projects I've seen on other blogs & forums. So maybe something like that, or Inquisimunda. Or maybe something along the lines of Space Hulk in gameplay -- confined combat, limited scope, and accessible to solo play. Some friends and I used to play very small point games of 2nd ed. 40k on Space Hulk & Adv. Space Crusade tiles and enjoyed that quite a bit, too. Not sure... I like the idea of avoiding "armies" -- so more like rogue traders, pirates, etc.

One More Fimir.... THEN back to Marienburg

So I lied a little.... just one more Fomorian/Fimir before really working on a lot of Marienburgers. (In truth, I have just cleaned, prepped & primed a pile of halberdiers -- just no real paint work on them yet.)

This is "Morrighu - Fomorian Witch" from Krakon games. Second pic next to a couple of my conversions for scale comparison.

Final - Two Giants Based

OK, last time I post photos of the same old giants. I finally finished all the little details and based them. DONE!

And one photo showing scale/size hierarchy among some of different giants. :)

I still plan on painting up the Warploque giant soon, but I need a little break from the big guys for a little bit. Maybe in another month or so.

Ultraforge Giant Almost Done -- What's Next?

Giants

I finished most of the details on the Ultraforge Giant. All I need to do is a few final touch-ups and the base. I tried to keep the colors of the accessories (clothing, etc.) on this one simple, in contrast with the brighter look of the Marauder Giant, and what I am planning for the Warploque Giant.

I'm really sort of stuck on how to base this guy and the Marauder giant. I don't want to get too carried away with a lot of extras, or make it look too far off my usual bases. But I'm also concerned with it looking overly plain.

So what next?

I've got a number of things on my to-do list. (Actually, I have a huge theoretical to-do list.) But here's where I'm thinking I will go in the near future...

Terrain. I feel like I've got a really great start on a diverse terrain collection. It's also somewhat more relaxing to work on. Or at least differently relaxing, and especially good lately when I've been a bit under the weather. I have a big list of things I'd like to make, but I'm content to just work on it as I feel like it, without rushing. "Wave Three" of the rivers & roads, some bridges, more buildings, ancient ruins, trees, and a whole lot of other stuff.

Fomorians/Fimir. I'd like to get back to this. I still have some great figures to paint up, plus more of my Reaper orc conversions to flesh things out. But I think this may take a momentary back seat to...

Marienburg. I think it's about time to return to the Marienburgers. While I do still have a lot of figures painted for this army (I sold some a few years ago,) I don't have the army I want. This is due to a shift in my gaming habit. In 6th/7th edition WFB, Empire swordsmen were a great buy. And in the context of the usual 6th/7th/8th gaming environment, every little advantage was important. Less effective troops were not worth taking due to the ultra competitive nature of popular gaming and Warhammer's focus on list-building. So I convinced myself to paint up a boatload of them as "sword and buckler men" and at this point that represents the dominant troop type in my Marienburg collection.

However, I would really prefer pike & halberd troops. And I could really use some crossbowmen too. So maybe it's about time to paint those up.

More on Marienburg

 I've been starting to write out more notes for my own solo (or remote?) "Althammer" campaign, and have nailed the setting down to an alternate 2439 I.C., which is ten years after Marienburg secedes from the Empire, and about 80+/- years before the last "present" time in the Warhammer background, or at least when all of that End of Storm of Chaos Times nonsense started. So I've decided to keep the puff & slash landsknecht style troops as trend setting, fashion-forward mercenaries flush with gold from the burghers' coffers. But the remaining rural/militia/semi-feudal troops will have an appearance similar to the period just prior in the real-world (mostly mid/late 15th century, but since it's a fantasy game I'm not going to be too strict about that.) This will give me the excuse to make use of a lot of other figures I really like, plus still keep the landsknecht style.

Terrain and Return to Painting

I'm climbing out of the funk of the last few weeks. A lot of things contributed to me not really painting miniatures much. But now we're all getting over our various recent illnesses in the household, my back is (mostly) feeling better, new glasses arrived, and I got a couple nights of good sleep.

In the mean time, I've been wrapping up "wave two" of my terrain binge. Here's a pic of most of what I've done lately.

4" river sections, 2" river sections, bogs, shrubs, and muddy dirt road. Kind of oldschool & cartoony looking, but that's the way we roll in the lonely attic.

But the real big deal is... I sat at the desk and actually applied paint to a couple of half-finished figures that I had wanted to wrap up a couple weeks ago. (The Ultraforge giant and a vampire I need to send off in the mail.)  I also applied quite a bit of GW Nuln Oil wash to my desk. About half of a new bottle, when I accidentally tipped it over. I'm looking forward to finishing both ASAP. Both figures, that is. Not the desk.

Game Convention Stink

I just discovered this in a box in the attic while digging around for other (non gaming) stuff. Brought up a bit of nostalgia for me. GW made an (apparently rare) appearance at Origins (year 2000?) soon after 6th ed. came out, and ran a small tournament. We were all using the Ravening Hordes lists. Coincidentally I was playing an all Nurgle daemon army. They handed out random little buttons to everyone, I got this one.

I also won a very large scale resin Empire great cannon, which is unfortunately in a bag, broken in pieces at this time. I am thinking about turning it into a crumbled-statue terrain piece.

Third

Rough Hedges

Random Thought

While painting some terrain this evening, it struck me that I'm really getting some work done on the gaming table I've always wanted. Maybe not my ideal. I'd love to have one at least 5' x 8' (mine is 4' x 6'-8"), more elaborate terrain, buildings to create a table-wide village, 3D modular tiles with clear resin water, etc. But I've got a lot of work into a pretty respectable, slightly oldschool, workhorse of a gaming table.

Now if I can just get some gaming done on it!

I am working on that.

Rough Hedges

Long ago I made some neat, cliche hedges using dish scrubbing pads mounted on bases.

But I wanted something a little less manicured. After making a few test pieces last week, I cranked out a small batch of hedges in the little in-between moments of the past few days. Three minutes here, five minutes there. So here's my first round of rough hedges, or at least linear foliage for village, roadside, and riverside.

To make them I cut strips of washable air filter (see below), and then further trimmed those into various lengths and irregular shapes. I spray painted them with a couple coats of dark olive green paint, then, when dry, I brushed a couple shades of lighter green on top of that. Done!

Not the best I've seen, but cheap, quick, and they look good enough for my purposes. In fact, I'm thinking about making another batch about that same size.

End of the Giant Month, More Terrain Materials

Illness, back problems, and other distractions have kept me from even my reduced goal (3 giants instead of 4) for the month. But I'm OK with that. I got motivated enough to paint up some giant-- the skeleton is entirely done, the Marauder giant is completely painted and just needs the base finished, the Ultraforge giant is over halfway done, and the Warploque giant... well, maybe I will get those last two finished in May.

And, as promised, here's a pic with my other, previously painted giants.

I also had requests for better shots of the water terrain. (Unfortunately, this goes the other direction and is a bit too much sunlight.)

Speaking of... I took a little bit of time earlier in the week before the weather got rainy to cut some more terrain. I could't find any hardboard to match what I was using. So I got some 1/4" MDF (a little thicker) for more rivers and some 1/8" hardboard to see how that works out for other terrain -- starting with some dirt/mud roads.