Me and my squad of ultimate bad-asses will protect you!

And the Colonial Marines are now painted. Painting 10mm models sure is quicker than 28mm ones.



Here's a bit of a closer shot.



And here's a squad deploying from the APC.



And of course they'll need some opposition too. The Aliens are almost complete - just the egg clusters to go.



And our final shot of the day are two colour scheme testers for the Wayland-Yutani corporation force.



The game itself is coming on nicely. Dan came over last night and we gave the rules a first shakedown. Noty only was the game quite playable but it also fun too. It still has plenty of rough edges and the balance needs a lot of work but it is a promising start.

Xenomorph project.

I have mentioned many times that I, just like may other wargamers, tend to flit between projects instead of seeing things to completion. I was suffering froma complete lack on inspiration to complete any of the projects on my workbench so I ended up starting a new one ... or more precisely digging out an old one to work on again.

Several years ago I had some ideas for coming up with my own board game based on the Aliens films. After mulling things over for a while I eventually took the plunge and bought a load of 10mm miniatures from the Pendraken Sci-Fi range in 2007. I then spent ages gathering images from the films for painting inspiration, textures for the tiles etc etc and then promptly put everything in a box and left it to gather dust.

One of the reasons for giving up was that I couldn't come up with a suitable way of basing the miniatures economically. I wanted to base them individually but nowhere seemed to produce bases small enough. thin enough or cheap enough for what I had planned. I experimented with washers but realised that it might cost more to base the miniatures than they had cost in the first place.
 
During the 'wilderness years' of the project I had occasionally added little bits here and there like PDFs of tiles etc but it was the recent Prodos AvP Kickstarter which started me thinking about my own project again and the basing problem. A solution finally came to me - tiddly winks would be the right size, shape and are nice and cheap. I checked eBay and bought a pack of 100 of them for a little over £2. With the basing issue resolved I could now make a proper start on the project.

Here are some of the miniatures based on tiddly winks.




I've added bits of aluminium mesh to the bases to make them look a bit nicer.




Here is the current state of the project - just a few more bases to finish.




And these are my colour scheme testers. They paint up pretty quickly so there is a chance I will actually finish this project.



And another look. I don't fancy those marines' chances.



Looks like I have plenty to be getting on with.

You got a killer scene there, man

Yesterday I decided to crack on with something else I have been putting off for a while - the scenery for my wargames table. To be honest I kept forgetting it needed doing until I would dig it out for a game. These are all based on terrain scatter bases from Fenris Games. The nice chap who runs it created these for me but you can also buy the from their store here and here.

I added some polyfilla, rocks and sand (sealed with PVA for for durability).




Here's a close up.



For practicality the trees are removable during play and are attached to the bases with magnets. Here is a wood base with the trees removed.



And lastly here is a quick bones mini I knocked up for inclusion in our D&D party. He is playing the part of Aaron Tallbow in the Dragonlance Classics campaign I am running at the moment.



And in other news I have finally made a start on those ghouls I have been putting off for a while.

Like a boss

And carrying on with the work bench clean up I have four Orc Bosses to lead some of my units.



There is now very little left on the workbench.

Being adventurous

A bit more desk tidying. These have been sitting around half painted for a while so I decided to get them finished.



There's now more room on my workbench but there are still some miniatures on there begging to be finished.

Ello ello Elohi

And the winner is ... The last unit of Elohi.



Well that's the last of them done.

Mintoaur detour

Okay so these don't look much like undead either. These are the last three non KickStarter bones minis that I had hoped to complete before my KS shipment arrived. I didn't quite manage that but here they are anyway. I seem to be having a little clear out of the minis which are sitting half painted on my workbench to make room for the minis I'm meant to be painting.



This friendly chap will be seeing action in our next D&D session.



And these two where just getting in my way. Now ... more undead or more desk tidying?

I'm painting angels instead

Yes, I know I said I'd keep going with the undead but I've been making a slight detour. I'm going to a tournament next weekend with friend and frequent opponent Daniel. Now Daniel had decided to bring a an entirely new (and very effective) army to the event but was running short of painting time due to having a new baby in the house. Just in case he didn't manage to get everything painted up in time I decided to paint up some of my miniatures which he could use as a fall back plan. As things turned out they painted up pretty quickly, but as Daniel has been making good progress with his own army it looks like they might not be needed after all..

Some Basilean Elohi (or angels to the rest of us).



And also a phoenix - painted in less than a day.







And here's a shot which gives you an idea of scale - he's quite a large beastie.



And now back to painting undead .. maybe.

Kings and things

And here are the characters for the 1600 point tournament army.



The two on the left are Mantic (Limited edition standard bearer and necromancer) and the two on the right are GW LOTR Morgul Knights (with a Mantic banner). The Morgul Knights fit in really well scale (and style) wise with the Mantic miniatures and I have used various Mantic parts to convert them, well only one in the photo above but there will be more to see in the second batch of characters I will be doing shortly.

And to wrap things up I decided to quickly paint up a batch of wound markers that I started work on over a year ago.



A quick splash of paint and they are ready to go. Now I won't need to use my elf wound markers for the undead army.

Look at my horse - my horse is amazing

And that's the knights complete - two troops of Revenant cavalry ready to play with. These took a little longer to complete that I had expected, partly because they are more time consuming to paint that I had counted on and partly because I lost quite a lot of painting time to my movement disorder.



I've carried on with the red and black (grey) colour scheme which will also carry over on to the characters. Speaking of which - I now have just 4 characters to complete and I have the tournament army (as currently envisaged) complete.

Of course this doesn't mean I'm finished with the army but it will be a nice milestone. I'm planning on completing a few extras which I can use as options in the future - and although I'm itching to start painting something else I will try and get everything done ASAP before the magic fades.

On my signal unleash hell!

This speed painting trip seems to yielding some impressive results. I can't remember ever having finished so many units in such a short time. I think the results look pretty good too which makes me wonder if the extra time I usually spend per model is actually worth it.

I have painted up four balefire catapults which can be really quite nasty in game terms in KoW. This are the first of the more "regular" units in the army and so I have used them to introduce a black (well grey really) and red colour motif which will also feature elsewhere.



I have also completed the last of the werewolves (for now anyway) - one more troop of werewolves and three individuals - all standing on rocks. The rocks are partly decoration and partly practical - as lone units exact positioning on the table top is often critical and they help with this. The rocks raise the model up so it should be easier to place them in direct base to base contact with other units and they also add some weight to the model and should prevent them from being knocked oout of position accidentally during play.



I'm now working on the cavalry for the army with a goal of maybe having it ready for a game on Wednesday.

Dirty rotten scoundrels

Speed painting seems to be the name of the game. I have managed to blast through both units of zombies far quicker than I could reasonably have expected.

Despite the speed I am reasonably proud of the results here. They are a testament to the impact of the current generation of washed (devlan mud etc) on how quickly you can get reasonable results these days.



Next in the queue are four balefire catapults which will give covering fire to the rest of the army.

KoW Ghost Protocol

I have set myself a target to complete my new KoW Undead army in time for the Pathfinder tournament at the NWGC next month. You may be asking yourself "what undead army" - well I completely failed on my ban on impulse purchases and added various discounted models to my KoW Kickstarter pledge and suddenly found myself collecting undead. I've added a few other purchases to round things out and now have 2000+ points of undead.

So far things are going reasonably well - the werewolves (below) were the first models painted and I've just added four units of wraiths completed yesterday.



With the time pressure for completing the army I went for a really simple colour scheme - the ghostly look.

I've also done all the movement trays for the army - a tedious and long winded task - which means I can concentrate on finishing the models and getting them ready for play. Next up are some zombies, I'm already halfway through the first unit so hopefully they will be completed very soon.

The art of movement

Holidays and a flare up of my movement disorder have meant that I haven't made much progress since my last post. Due to the recent KoW kickstarter delivery I have loads of assembled miniatures in various stages of painting cluttering up my study. With the impending delivery of yet more Kickstarter swag I decided to have a bit of a tidy up and to that end I had a big session of painting up movement trays and magnetising everything so I could put stuff away in boxes. I'm not sure why but units look so much better when they are based nicely and on a matching movement tray. It took me all afternoon to do about 8 trays, slower than usual but my PNKD was bothering me at the time.

In other news I found some old orc crossbow miniatures when clearing out some storage a few weeks ago. I JPed (re-based) them yesterday and now they will be Orc Sniffs in my Orc KoW army.



I think I painted these over 10 years ago. They've been sitting around unused for a very long time. Its always nice to find new uses for old miniatures.

Brocking at the moon

And here come the last two werewolves from my first batch (more to arrive later)



And my first completed brock rider.



I've another 29 of those to go so it might take a while.

There wolves

Since my last update I have been deluged with miniatures from the Mantic Kings of War Kickstarter. There are still more to come later in the month but this delivery was pretty substantial - ogres, werewolves elves and lots of dwarves riding brocks. It is going to take a while to make a dent in that lot.

I made a start on the werewolves as they are nice miniatures and easy to paint up. Last night I had this many painted:-



And this morning I added these as well.



Not bad going really. :)

I have two more ready to paint up and another 6 coming in my next delivery from Mantic. I guess this means I'm starting an undead army.

I've also been working on the brock riders and here is a WIP shot of one of the brocks.



I think they'll look really nice when I have them all painted up.

2013 Part 2

The first miniatures of the second half of 2013 are beginning to stack up. Here are some Hasslefree minis flanking some very old Grenadier evil dwarves.



Following swiftly on we have a couple of Citadel Black Orcs and Savage orcs. I've painted these up to fill the gaps left by the standard bearer and musician.



Painting these with "modern" techniques (i.e. washes) meant that these were quicker to paint up than the original unit members and the results look better too - that's progress for you.

Half term report

Well the score at half time is 181 miniatures worth painted (165 actual) vs an unknown total of purchases.

This means that even if this year is likely to be a fail, I am still on track to have the most productive year since records began which is something to take comfort in.

Lets see how I've been getting along with my objectives.

1) Play more games
I made a good start with this one but it has tailed off a bit recently. Must try harder.

2) Don’t make any impulse purchases
Er, best skip this one I think.

3) Paint at least 4 DreadBall teams
I've done well with this one - I've painted up 6 teams so far.

4) Paint my Dwarf Army
Well I have 5 of them on my workbench right now. I think I will have to make a bit more of an effort with this one.

So lets see what the second half of the year brings.

More guards

I decided to take a quick break from painting DreadBall minis and paint up some more elves. The trigger for this was organising a game of KoW and deciding I wanted to use more palace guard in the list. I dug out the palace guard I bought in January(-ish) to use to plug the gaps left by removing the banner and musician from the units (to save on points).



It was a nice change to paint some elves again as it has been a while. Whilst I was doing the palace guard I decided to paint up a couple of siege engine crew which were also on the to-be-painted tray.



The Dragons Breath engine itself will be done when I work out what colours I want it to be.

The sound of sirens

Another milestone - I'm now half way through my DreadBall Season 2 teams. Here is the complete female human team.



I painted these up very quickly - probably too quickly. After I had varnished them I had a good look and realised that I didn't like what I saw. Fortunately it seems like another round of highlights has salvaged them and I think I am now happy with the result.

Next up is Anne-Marie Helder, a S2 DB MVP. I painted her at the same time as the rest of the team but as she can play for anyone I game her a unique colour scheme.



And lastly I have a colour scheme tester.



I bought quite a lot of Mantic orcs in the sale and also when they were on offer at the Clash of Kings. They are stylistically quite different to the other orcs in my collection so I wanted to try and make them blend in by using the same colours. I'm quite happy with the results here so at some point I will be painting up several units of them.

Faceless and nameless

Its been a relatively slow week on the painting front due to a short holiday. Despite this I have still managed to quickly paint up a couple of DreadBall MVPs. First up is the squiggly tentacled John Doe.



Followed swiftly by Number 88.



Currently on the workbench are the Void Sirens (female human) DreadBall team. I have come up with a simple (and easy) colour scheme and I'm aiming to have them done quite quickly.

Judwan done!

Wow, that was quick - I only got these primed on Monday and now they're all done, a complete Judwan Dreadball team. That's the first of the season 2 teams complete with three more to go. They were very quick to paint up and maybe not to my best standard but they're ready for play.



I also completed the fist of my MVPs, Mee-Kel Judwan. I'm planning to paint most of my MVPs in team neutral colours but as MKJ only plays for Judwan teams I decided to paint him up with the rest of the team.



I have already made a start on the next team, the female human team but with half term coming up for my daughters it might be a little longer before I can get them completed.

It's clobberin' time!

A couple more bones minis have rolled off the production line, firstly an ogre:-



And also a bugbear:-



Both were nice and quick to paint up. This just leaves me with three more bones to paint up out of the ones I had bought. An unofficial target I had set myself was to get all my bones minis painted before the Reaper Bones KickStarter deleivers and as this has now been delayed it looks like I might achieve this one.

In other news yesterday marked the end of a 12 day period where I was untroubled by my movement disorder following a blow to the head (and subsequent concussion). Unfortunately this might slow me down again but at least the stuff I painted during that time stays in the painted pile.