This corrosion

As promised I have started shifting miniatures from my workbench and on to the painted pile. Here we have two gangs for Wild in the Streets from Slow Death Games, a "fun, fast and easy to play skirmish game of youth subcultures fighting in the streets".

I had fun helping to run games of WitS at Salute with the folks from Random Platypus but these are the first two of my own gangs.

Here we have the Murder Cult Girls. A vicious and fast gang who really can dish out the pain.

Also lurking in the back alleys we have the Goth Gang. At least they won't have to worry about washing out those pesky blood stains as I'm sure they won't be showing through.

And I couldn't resist a posed shot of the two gangs facing off.

I should have some more WitS gangs arriving in the mail any day now. Once I have had a chance to throw some paint at them I will be running a few games of WitS at the club.

Meanwhile, elsewhere on the workbench much work is progressing on my orcs. Hopefully I will have some to show off very soon.

Is it June already?

Wow, that's probably my longest time between updates in all the years I have been running this blog.

So what's been happening since I posted last? Well as you may have guessed - there haven't been any completed miniatures since January but that doesn't mean I have been completely idle. In that time I have painted up a quantity of modern scenery, some of which which I took with me to Salute for the Wild in  the Streets game that Random Platypus was helping out with.

Miniatures wise I have prepped a whole load of stuff and part painted a whole load of stuff. Hopefully over the coming weeks and months I will be able to reap the rewards of the work I have done and be able to show off some of the painted results.

First to escape the workbench are these chaps. More cheap plastic Tehnolog miniatures, this time 54mm undead Knights based up as KoW wights. They work out at around $1 a miniature including postage which makes up for the soft detail and general bendyness. You can get an idea of their size from the mantic zombie I have included in the photo.

The rest of the workbench is currently covered in Orcs although they might get leapfrogged by soem Wild in the Streets miniatures I also have on the go. The Orcs have been waiting for their KoW2 upgrades for years and I finally decided that it was time to get them back on to the table top once again. I have loads of little additions and unit upgrades for this army and I will see how many of them I can complete before something else piques my interest.

2018 is underway

Late 2017 saw my Kickstarted copy of DreadBall 2 arrive in the post. I opted just for the rulebook pledge this time as I still have plenty of unpainted miniatures from first time around. The new system converts a good chunk of the MVPs into team captains and makes both classes much more likely to hit the field. This spurred me on to paint up some of the characters who had been languishing in a box for years.

 I also got cracking on some of the alternate poses for the Judwan team. The chaps in red will be available as transfers for other teams.

I've also made a start on some of my other Dreadball miniatures. I have alternate poses left to do for the Veermyn, Marauders and Forge Fathers and entire expanded teams for Nameless, Zees, Tetratons and Astereans ... and a load of MVPs and giants too. I'm hopeful that the game will take off at the local club giving me more incentice to get painting.

The Scale of the Problem (2018 edition)

As is tradition, here is a glimpse of what still remains in the lead/plastic pile

28mm Scale Projects

Orcs
System: KoW
Status: Lots of figures painted, many more in the lead pile
Comments: No painting progress during 2017 but I did at least organise some stuff for the painting queue. Some extra purchases.

Goblins
System: KoW
Status: Lots of figures painted, the lead pile is now considerably diminished
Comments: 2017 saw a very minor expansion to my goblin army. The lead pile remains at about 60-80 miniatures strong
 
Kingdoms of Men/Basileans
System: KoW
Status: 18 knights started, about 100+ more models unpainted.
Comments: No painting progress during 2017. All set for whenever I feel up to taking this project on.

Dwarfs
System: KoW
Status: 80% unpainted, about 150-250 models in total.
Comments: No progress during 2017.

High Elves
System: KoW
Status: Mostly painted
Comments: Three more units complete in 2017 only about 4 more to go.

Undead
System: KoW
Status: Mostly painted
Comments: Most of my 2017 progress was additions to my undead army. Those January 2017 purchases have set me back a bit on the road to completion though.

Ogres
System: KoW
Status: 40% done
Comments: No progress or purchases during 2017.

Blood Angels
System: Warhammer 40K
Status: Mostly finished.
Comments: Over 2500 points + options available for use. Gathering dust.

DreadBall Teams
System: DreadBall
Status: 8 teams painted out of 12
Comments: Late 2017 saw renewed interest in the game and work re-commenced but too late to score any painted models for 2017.

Dead Zone
System: Dead Zone
Status: 1 faction starter done
Comments: No progress during 2017 but a handful of models bought to flesh out factions.

SWAT teams and Criminals
System: Officer Down!
Status: Completed (well almost).
Comments: 4 more miniatures painted but a dozen or so bought at salute.
 




The Walking Dead
System: All Out War
Status: New project for 2017 - about 50% painted.
Comments: A surprise addition to the list - with a bit of concentration I could get them all completed fairly quickly.
 
RPG miniatures
System: D&D etc
Status: Lots painted - lots still to do.
Comments: No progress during 2017.

10/15mm Scale Projects

High Elves, Undead, Dark Elves, Mongols, Later Muslim Indian, Later Achmeneid Persian
Systems: DBA, HOTT etc
Status: No progress during 2017.

2017 and all that

As another January rolls around it is time to take stock and look back over the previous year's painting progress.

So how was 2017 for me? Well for personal reasons it was a year I would not care to repeat. One day I will look back at 2017, laugh nervously and then change the subject.

This had an inevitable effect on my painting and my output was way down on where I had hoped it would be. I also completely shelved my planned human KoW army as I was in no state to undertake a project of that scale. In spite of all this I did still manage to complete 149 miniatures (using my patented 28mmEQ method) which wasn't bad but was way less than the number of miniatures I bought.

2017 was a FAIL - good riddance to 2017.

This year will be better ... if only because belt tightening will mean that I won't be spending much on miniatures this year.

I'm alright noooow

I am making some slow efforts to clear some items which have been hanging around partly done for a while. I sometimes find this quite a drag as items often end up partly finished because I have either lost enthusiasm for them or I no longer have any clear plans to use them. I've just completed the second batch of Tehnolog Werewolves which I started back in the summer. These ended up partly finished as I couldn't get them completed in time for the KoW campaign day and the largely werewolf based army I took to that even had its posterior kicked repeatedly resulting in me putting the army back into storage. I now have 4 hordes of werewolves painted up which is some serious overkill. If I'm honest I only bought this second pack as they were dirt cheap and with postage being the main cost adding a second made the deal look better.

I'm now trying to work on the Tehnolog 54mmm undead knights which I got at the same time to use as wights in my KoW army. Again this is more of a case of grinding through them as I have lost my enthusiasm for the miniatures as bit. I'm sure they will look great once they are done.

The green and the mean

And as usual October brings the Clash of Kings, and as per usual I decided to add something new to my army at the last minute. This time I decided I wanted to take the full complement of 3 war trombones with me and also the goblin living legend, Grogger Split-Tooth, from the Edge of the Abyss book. There is no official miniature for Grogger so I chose to paint up a Kevin Adams goblin warlord that I had to hand.

Both new additions did pretty well in the tournament, shame about the general!

Of course simply painting up two new items wasn't enough so I also went round and improved the basing on my entire goblin army because it seemed like a good idea at the time. My orcs and goblins suffer from being the first armies that I collected and the basing style could be described as dated (if you were being kind). To improve things I added clumps of a contrasting  dark green flock to the bases and washed all the flock with diluted PVA to blend in the colours. Once everything was dry I then added grass tufts and bushes to break up the plainer areas. Then end result makes them look a lot better then they did. The basing is still not fantastic but it never will be unless I completely re-base everything and that is not going to happen.