And the chips just keep on coming!!

Been slowly chipping away at the pile of grey shame.

There are a lot of 'big' elements to add to the ogre army which have been absorbing a lot of my hobby time recently but decided I needed to see something finished in order to keep the painting mojo high so made a concerted effort to get somethings completed this last week.

First up is Reaper bones ogre which I originally bought at the Miniature Empire. This gives some indication how long it has been sitting in the cupboard of doom.

Not the greatest miniature ever created but considering it cost less the 3 quid (new!) I am more then happy with it.

It will end up hidden within a bigger unit of Ogres somewhere.

Finishing the above miniature from start to finish in less then an hour really helped me get the bit between my teeth and I immediately reached for another lump of semi finished plastic crack.

The miniature below is an addition to my Ogre Tyrant army thanks to claiming the 'Banner of Mount Bloodhorn' after the siege of Ekrund.

I decided to give it the symbol from Lee's Orc army.

The reason being in the Badlands lore the banner was originally an Orc banner which gives the unit the 'Devastating charge' special rule.

The banner was also given an Orc skull I had sitting in the bits box to honour Lee's General's last stand during 'Riotville LIVE!'.

It was also originally intended to show the unity between Lee's army and mine!!!!!!

Of course after his treachery during game six this 'unity' is now very debatable!

Below is my effort to homage Lee's original banner.

Lee's original banner is below.

My army symbol adorns the other side.

The final entry to the painting tally today is the last of my Ironguts I had sitting around.

Absolute minimum effort on this fella due to his 'third ranker' status.

I only really got this fella done in order to scratch the Ironguts completely off my to-do list.

Now the numbers

Miniatures painted / sold this year = 174

Miniatures bought 97

 

341 miniatures to go!

Bank Holiday painting and possibly biting off more then I can chew

Being the Bank holiday weekend of the half term and the Wife and kids going to church I managed to finish off several miniatures from the 'pile of grey shame' today.

First up is a Dark Elf Hydra. . . . 

This is actually Ed's miniature but I needed something big to practise my speed painting on and Ed kindly volunteered this miniature.

I think he also really wanted this painted and hoped I would do a half decent job ;0)

Technique here has very simular to my 'Legends of the Old west' miniatures.

Undercoated black and then I zenith spayed this one with 'Alien purple' from the Army painter primer range.

With this one I did mask off the stomach with tape.

Then it was just a case of tidying up the edges, picking out the bone and frills, ink washes and dry brush.

In this case the edge highlight was GW 'Blue horror'.

The face did get a bit of extra attention becasue . . . . well it's the face!

Hopefully Ed will be happy with it when he sees it?

Next up are some Sabre Tusks for my (rapidly) expanding Ogre army for 8th edition WHF.

Nothing flash here.

Undercoated black, zenith sprayed Army painter 'leather brown' then a very light spray of white.

The mane was ink washed and the edge highlights on the torso were done with watered down GW 'Zamesi desert'

Really surprised how natural they have turned out considering the crudeness of the technique!

Next up is another of the 'towns folk' for Lago.

Another example of the zenith spray and ink wash technique I am using more and more.

Again the quality of the Reaper sculpt really helps me pull off this technique.

Final entry is 'Bug eyed Bill' who has gone and bought himself a Shotgun with his dollars!

It's now a sawn off shotgun because I dropped it while painting and it broke ;0(

Still works for me.

And here is a group shot.

I really am spoilt rotten at the moment with all the cool stuff going on in my gaming circles and the diversity of miniatures this offers me to paint!

Now the numbers

Miniatures painted / sold this year = 164

Miniatures bought 95

349 miniatures to go!

Because I have got myself all giggly and silly over 'Blood in the Bablands' I have made a beast heavy army list and gone and bought myself  this. . . . . 

Now I have to try and get this lot constructed and painted by the end of the half term holiday!!!

Yer. . . . . . . right?

Holiday painting. Reaper, Village of Kullhaven, Townsfolk

Here are some pics of the painting I managed to complete while away.

This is the bartender from the Reaper Kulhaven set.

This fella is painted up as a NPC element for my games of Mordheim.

He has also ended up in my Empire army militia and has already seen off a Orc Stone Golum and a unit of 20 Arrow boyz!

What a boy!

The lovely fact is the weather was beautiful and we had a brilliant time so I spent very little time with the brushes.

I did get 4 Greatswords finished as well. The truth is they are not great sculpts and I have a lot of duplicates in the set I bought. Thankfully I bought a set of the modern efforts and the set above will probably end up in the rear ranks.

I also wanted to show off a effort of my friend Lee. He is a WHF salty dog and it was a pleasure to play his fully painted Orcs. Unfortunately the sun was setting so I never really got a chance to take any photos.

Real shame!

One realisation I have had is that I am going to need to field more spearmen as it looks like we will be playing 1500 to 2000 point games. This is great but there was no way I was looking to paint another dozen of the pigs!

This has led to me pulling out the green stuff and creating this guy . . . . .

Miniatures painted / sold this year = 83 (silver tower does not count)

Target 100

Miniatures bought 15 (silver tower does not count)

371 miniatures to go!

68 in the black this year

A little something to start the year with.

First two chips off the Lead mountain for the year completed.

First up is a Scibor Barbarian for my Brothers Dwarf Mordheim Warband.

And he's a blinder!!

Such a gorgeous sculpt and a great way to start the year with the brushes!

Thanks to 'Army Painter, Barbarian flesh, primer spray' he was finished in less then 90 minutes!!

While waiting for the washes to dry I also knocked out this fella. . . .

A tiny little lump of lead (see the first photo) from the Reaper Villagers set I bought ages ago.

My brother and I were discussing a fun little scenario on Friday night which involves a small child NPC.

If it is successful I will give it a run out at the 'Enrichment Club'.

I have also had a couple of miniatures go to better home thanks to eBay. Funnily enough one of them actually ended up being sold to someone in the marketing department of GAMES WORKSHOP! How ironic selling a 1980's Chaos Dwarf back to GW!!

My mental run of luck continues into 2016. Not only did I only lose TWO miniatures in Saturdays battle (more on that later in the week) despite being surrounded by Dryads and Dwarfs, I have also won the prize draw for Chico breaking the 20K veiws over at 'Oldhammer on a budget'.

I great blog (and fella!) which is well worth checking out.

So lets take a first look at the numbers for the year.

Miniatures painted / sold this year = 4.

Target 100

Miniatures bought 1 (I made the mistake of going to Dark Sphere and they were having a sale on).

436 miniatures to go!

3 in the black this year.

2015 a year in review.

Once again it is that time of the year where we secretly pat yourself on the back under the pretence of looking back over the previous year.

This one is going to be easy.

The first six months of the year can be summed up in a single word MORDHEIM!!!!!!!!

Painting Mordheim,

creating mordheim terrain, 

Dr. Gostellos new exhibit. Brother Herq the strong man.

'Oceans filled with tears. Shed by the angels weeping. For souls fell in war'

Brother Herq had always been the sensitive type, fully embracing the majesty of the tea ceremony as much as the hours of practise with the power sword.

He knew the other initiates sniggered at him behind his back because of his love of composing Haiku poetry, but none dare insult him to his face because of his proficiency with the blade.

Of course the Star Warriors had come to the temple. Of course he had been selected. Of course he had hated every second of it!

OY stop messing about!!! You've back to work on Tuesday!!

I know. . . . I know! I'm back to work on Tuesday and should have spent the summer prepping for my new SEN role but. . . . . 

This is so much more fun then lesson prep!

One day I will grow up. . . . . Honest!

Here are some WIP shots of Herq the new strong man and an update of Dr. Gostellos first transporter.

First off here is where I left off

Since then I have discovered Games Workshop technical paints; Typhus corrosion and Ryza rust and now the truck looks like this. . . .

Dr. Gostello's new exhibit, Reaper Ape X, super villain. and other chips from the lead mountain.

So today I finished up Dr. Gostello's new exhibit; Brother Beringei Graueri the cyber Gorilla.

I have decided that Brother Beringei is a Space Marine from Necromunda. Unfortunately it was found he was actually agrophobic during basic training, due to living underground since birth and no amount of psycho surgery or  facist indoctrination could cure him (this was influenced by the Gorilla in the dumbo parade reattaching his bar in the film!).

He was offered one last chance to redeem himself before he was mind wiped to become a servitor. 

Warmachine Highborn Covenant 20 point army list. Viva la revolution

So with the finishing of my last Gun Mage, I have finally painted up my 20 point High Born Covenant army list.

I am not going to pretend this is some super-duper, all conquering, Chuck Norris, world dominating, super beardy list, but it is the list I have the most fun(?) with.

I have pretty much built this entire army around Ashlynn’s feat and if nothing else ensures me at least a round of giggles as everything goes for a flying lesson in the feat turn. There are holes in this list and I always struggle against Sorscha and Satyxis Raiders with their Sea Witch attachment but other than that, it is a fairly versatile force that has a punchers chance against everything.

Warmachine. Ashlynn against the Slone (and) Ranger(s).

Last December I had a bit of a Warmachine melt down! 

Since then I had only played two games.

One was a 50 pointer against Lano as it seemed the most appropriate way to see out a year of absolute misery that was 2014. To my surprise it turned out to be a cracking game that we unfortunately had to pull short due to time constraints.

The other game was against Tim at the Creative Biscuit. His only other opponent would have been Russell and Tim was not ready for that kick in the nuts yet! Again it developed into a cracking game of 30 points!

So as is the way with poisonous relationships after a while you start looking back, remembering the good times and wondering "Was it really so bad?".

As a consquence I have found myself picking this up more and more often to have a read..........

WHF Empire militia / Mordheim Reikland Mercenaries Miniatures. Goodbye to the forsaken!

Some how this year I have ended up with a unit of 20 odd militia for my Empire WHF army thanks to the unexpected foray into Mordheim! I have to be honest they are of as much of a surprise to me as they are to you as I have no plans to add this unit to my army for quite a while (if at all)!

With the wrapping up of our current Mordheim campaign it only felt right to get the gang together for one last photoshoot.

I have deliberately left out Crashhart, Rags, Nathan and the original version of 'Red' as they are all attached to other elements of my WHF Empire army.

Even so, is still quite a collection. A big part of the reason was the fact I rolled horrendously during the injury phase of each endgame, usually resulting in the death of at least one of my warband (usually more!).

They are (left to right); 

Front rank: Spook (shattered leg), Jeffery Archer (Dead), Red (Alive), Grim Ironjaw (Dead), Eric / Dread Lord Crashhart (Chest wound, Toughness 2), Cairo (Alive), Crazy Bob (Alive), 

Middle rank: Archie (Dead), Arnold Leggenbreaker (Alive), Hal Bard (Dead), Shinobi Joe (Alive), Kate (Dead), Spike (Dead), 

Rear rank: Wenchman (Captured / Dead), Guapo Joe (Dead), Original Eric (Alive), Wild eyed Joe (Dead).