Really Yesterday's Post

Having spent much of the day shivering and sleeping I thought it was time I posted what I did yesterday. Things planned for the week are now getting close to completion. So all in all I am feeling quite happy. Despite the shivering.

I am even getting close to finishing off the terrain. There are loads of bits to do, enough to do three linear feet, which has kind of put me off so far. Still it's there and and I want to get it done for a couple of game I have planned.

Now I thinking about next week. I have found eight figures that I think I purchased in 1992. This would be a nice thing to get out of the Lead Mountain. Not the oldest thing I own but probably the oldest thing I can find at the moment. They turned up a few years ago but there is one missing. I was hoping to find the missing one before I started but what the hell. If I do get round to painting them I have no idea what I will use them for. At the moment I just want to.

A Mixed Bag Kind Of Week - For Figure Painting

This week I am hoovering up some more of what is hidden in the lead mountain including Crooked Dice, Gripping Beast, Crusader and what I thought was Ironclad but now I am not so sure. This is the last of the Viking Game stuff I got half a decade ago and the rest rest is also about that age or a little bit older

This should put to bed the Viking project. The Crooked Dice figures I think were designed for the 1970s TV show concept but I figure that they will do for the 1940s Weird War 2. I did dally with the idea of Victorian skirmish games but the person I thought was going to get involved with didn't follow through. This seems to happen to me a lot. I buy stuff to play games with others who then play a single game, maybe two but generally don't play any at all. Still a friend of mine runs a game (intermittently) in that era and they might just do for the 1930s although they will look out of date for the 1940s.

This will put me at least ten figures ahead by the end of the week. At the end of last year I was lamenting the fact that I wasn't going to get much done. Now I am knocking on the doors of over achieving. With a following wind, I will have managed to have painted as many figures this year as I did in the whole of last year.

Clearly The Bad Guys - Frankish Warriors

Tired of Stormtroopers today. Will come back to them soon.

In the fantasy RPG game based in the Viking era the Franks are a bit of a hard luck story (imagine a Frank being a hard luck story 😕 because I can't). They are being hammered by all their neighbours except those to the North and they hate them more than anyone else. The only thing between the Northmen and the Franks is the heavily defended pass and the biggest actively defended wall in all of Europe. It is also the only way they have to go without killing their own.

I wanted a barbarian like race in the Viking game (it's good enough for Skyrim). The models themselves are Roman era Germanic tribesmen so in many ways close enough in geography and equipment to what was probably there at the time. Not so outrageous that they wouldn't look out out place in a Conan film or even Thrud the Barbarian either (way too D&D for me).

Part of my plan for the game involves running a mass battle system. One of the battles would be the war against the Franks as they try to slip over the border to get away from their impending doom at the hands of the Carolingians. These figures have been in the queue for a while.

I got these a few years ago with the idea of using them as bad guys for the game and painted about thirty. These are what is left. Not sure the plan would be to get any more but who knows. See how the game goes. This game has taken up most of my painting time since mid 2013 and still seems to draw me back to it.

End Of The Week, Dark Age Leaders & The Coming Zombie Apocalypse

This has been a week where my energy levels have been at an extremely low level. The expression post-viral keeps springing to mind. It's odd that this has been my most productive week in ages. Being ill last Sunday lead me to this of a more modest goal than usual, four horses and start work on the riders and dismounted counterparts. All are now done and even based. During the process I even managed to find time to play about with a few new ideas.

The one on the left does look a bit like Keith Lemon

Aside from painting, I have done a lot of reorganising. This was really a space saving measure than anything else. Whilst not as effective as I was hoping, there is more space than there has been for a long while. I feel that I have reclaimed a little more territory.

FabLab has been extremely productive and more than a little bit of fun. I now have enough of the sabot bases for my wargame. As well as the stuff for the game, I have cut loads of figure base and some terrain bases. I am trying out a few ideas for a modular dungeon. This isn't as good as I hoped but it doe work (with a bit of, er, how would I put it, manual alterations?) I'm enjoying having someone to talk to. I have even got my uncle going. It turns out one of the other attendees went to the same school as him and he used to know members of our family.

Over the next week I have the Road To Zomtober. Not sure what I am going to do first yet. The plan is to go for painting half a dozen for every week. Maybe more if  I can find the time. I also want to finish off the sabot bases with  view to trying the rules out in a few weeks. A few weeks ago the plan had been to tackle some black elves. I ran out of the greenstuff I needed for the bases. I now have this so I might give finishing them off a go if I have time. There are no hard and fast plans for FabLab. I have other things to do on Thursday so I won't be doing anything until Saturday. If the cutter is playing ball I might have another go at the dungeon terrain.

Moving Swiftly Along

Despite having a week where I seem to have slept more than being awake, the figure painting is moving ahead briskly. The initial plan was to finish the horses I started at the beginning of the week and make a start on the the riders and their dismounted versions. Other than a few bits of detailing, the horses are now pretty much done. The riders and dismounted characters are pretty close to having a base coat done and even had some detailing.

If all goes to plan, the weekend might see me finish everything off. I have FabLab tomorrow. This is probably not going to get in the way too much as I don't normally start painting till late in the afternoon. So...The plan had been to finish off what I had started before moving on to the next project, which was going to be a figure for Zomtober. I am starting to think that I might just be able to get five or more figures done for the October the First.

If I can manage six figures a week, that would make thirty done by the end of the month. There are about fifteen in the house at the moment but I have a big delivery on the way. There are going to be some that are the same a what I already have. I'm not sure that duplicates of Ric and Carl  (not to mention Patrick, Liam Dennis and Sandra) are not going to stand out like a sore thumb but I might get round to selling them. I might keep hold of the zombie but I suspect they will get painted. It's easy to give one zombie a different paint job to another.

Horses

I have never been a big fan of horses. I got to ride one when I was six or seven and that was alright. At about 10 I was bitten by one and that put me off. Then I was thrown off during a donkey derby. There have been a number of times when I have tried to learn horse riding but I am a big bloke and the horses that I can ride should be drawing carts full of beer barrels.

But I digress. Horses. They are not my favourite thing to paint. I may have mentioned that. Now I have four of them to do before the end of the week and make a start on the riders and he dismounted riders. Still, they are now mostly blocked out and their bodies have been inked up. Just the detailing to go.

Having spent the best part of three days in bed I am starting to come round again. Hopefully I will get a little more done during the week. Tomorrow is looking pretty good and we will see what Thursday at FabLab brings. Sometime in the next few day I should have The Road To Woodbury for THD:AOW. I need to start doing some prep for Zomtober but there is a plan for that too. Hopefully that will mean doing an extra figure each week.

Target Reached - What's On The Workbench

Sadly for last year on the blog, my current blogging target is to put up as many posts in January as I did in the whole of last year. Target achieved. So I am a bit happier. Hurrah. I have managed to put up some new stuff I have been working on and dig out a bit of all of the hard work that I should have blogged about last year.

Anyway, now I just need to legitimise this post and make it a post about something real, I thought I'd show what is the work in progress on bench at the moment. This mostly Frostgrave stuff with a couple of Crusader Franks. Some of the Frostgrave minis are the original run and some are from Thaw of the Lich Lord. I dropped one of the Franks and the sword dropped off. Which is a shame but I have a sword I can replace it with a Gripping Beast sword.

With the amount of time I have at the moment, These will not get finished this month. Tax return is pending I am have a lot of family commitments to see to will stop me getting too far.

So now I have two targets. firstly, I want all my paint in dropped bottles by the end of February. The second one is to paint two hundred 28mm figures in 2016. When I have done the paint, I might look at redoing the work bench, again.

More Stuff Just About Done

I have lot a little titivating of some 28mm Frostgrave miniatures today so that they are more or less done. Not a lot of work but at least something has been done. I might actually meet my blogging target but more of that at the end of the month. I can't remember what this figure was called but it was a bonus figure from the original Frostgrave Nickstarter. He has been floating around the desk for a while now. Guess it is time to put him to bed one of the huge number of foam trays.

This character is the Marksman from the original Nickstarter. I don't have too many crossbowmen and I think this guy is the only metal one The casting fits in well with all the dark.Viking stuff that I already have.. He will fit in well with the Norman figures that I have to do even if he is a little over armoured for a Norman. Nice figure apart from the two piece crossbow.

The last guy today is and isn't a Frostgrave figure. When the Nickstarter narrowly missed one of it's goals they decided to give a Crusader miniature away as a bonus. I don't tend to paint much in yellow because it is a bigger to get an even coat. This one however turned out okay.

Very Brief Update

This is more about what I have done than one I am doing at the moment. These were more or less finished at the beginning of the month but I am only just getting around to posting the pictures. These first three figures are all Crusader Miniatures Franks. They fit well into a role I have for them in the Viking game I run. They are effectively fleeing refugees looking for somewhere to live.

This one is slightly better equipped than the others, and the model of what I saw the refugees looking like. I have some shield painted up which will need to be glued on. There is still scope for a bit more work on the base but I will spray varnish the figure before doing that. The spray tends to make some of the more fluffy stuff a lot less fluffy.

The last one of the Crusader Miniatures figures is this naked fanatic. The tash on this one would make me nervous just looking at him in real life. I can see why naked fanatics were suppose to cause such fear in the enemy. I can just imagine turning up to a rugby match where the other team turned up naked, not a pleasant image.

There is a little left to do on the basing (as was ever the case). I guess these are figures that are as finished as much as they are going to be at least until I get them varnished.

Major Achievement - Hurrah For Me

Well not so much, it's not like I have killed some big bad in Fallout 3, I am a gamer not a formula one driver or Max Rockatansky after all.  My biggest achievement of the day, well perhap it wasn't that big. No Golden Demons trophies for me today.

My major achievement of the day is simply this. I have rescued two aerosol  cans from the garage. One to base coat some essentially black figures and the other is some spray varnish. It has been a very hard day in a lot of respects which I am not really going to go into but by god I am glad it's nearly time for bed. I am not sure it rates the disco ball but if today has had a disco ball moment, this was it. Yes it was that bad but it wasn't as bad as yesterday or the day before that.

 

I have managed one more thing. That is to tidy the workbench, It is probably tidier than it has been in for several  months. I have run out of space for paint. I am planning to do something about that but it is just a plan at the moment.

Still things are looking like I might do some more actual painting. Painting that is more than a black undercoat. I don't undercoat anything like as much as people recommend. I usually depend on spray on varnish to keep the paint on. One less layer of paint usually helps the details show through.

 

Anyway, for the most part at least, these are Frostgrave stuff. I am liking the minis at the moment and they seem to fit nicely with what I have already painted. I will probably end up with a few too many wizards. There are a few Gripping Beast and Crusader minis in with the Northstar Stuff.

Frostgrave

I got my stuff from the Frostgrave Kickstarter, I mean Nickstarter today. This has gotten me out of my temporary blogging fugue. I have been doing some painting and a little bit of tarting up of old figures. I should get round to posting some pictures soon.

So, Like I say I got the kicktstarter stuff. There was quite a lot of it. The figures were really pretty on the promo stuff. I liked it a lot so I ordered the full package.

Twenty magic users, ten other metal figures, twenty plastic figures, just less than ten trasures markers, a rulebook, a downloadable scenario, a book of short stories and some wallpapers. Mustn't forget the wallpapers.  so quite a lot of stuff.

The rulebook is a really good quality hardback. Rules are nice and simple. It could use a bit more contact and background to fill up the space but what is there is excellent. the pictures are fantastic the illustrations are pretty good too. Well worth a read and this is set to be my toilet book for the next month. The book of stories, well that's a nice touch but I can't see anyone actually paying money for it. Overall verdict on this book was meh.

 The Wizards are what this game is all about. hugely pretty figures. They just about fit in with what I normally paint for fantasy figures, maybe a little out of period. Twenty of them is enough for any rpg game but I guess only just enough for Frostgrave. You also get a bonus figure of a necromancer. This looks like it's going to be a pain to paint and I don't have a plan for it. This may change when the Liche Lord Supplement comes out towards the end of the year.

There are ten metal retainers. One of them is a bit of a cheat as it's a a figure out the Crusader Range but it's nice to have a free figure. There are some retainers. Again all nice poses and I can find a use for all of them. There are just not enough of them.

The plastic figures look pretty good on the website. Lots of things you can do with these. My current plan is thieves and brigands plus a few other bits and pieces. There are a lot of accessories which I can see ending up being used elsewhere. The only down note with these is that they are a little smaller than the rest of the figures.

There are quite a few freebies in there somewhere. The Liche Lord being the prize but the treasure tokens are pretty good too.

For first run figures, they are a bit claggy, There is a lot of excess metal in the form of flash. There is not much in the way of mold lines though. Some are pretty bad but for the most part, this does not detract from the figures

 The two shorts of the war dog arepretty typical of how the figures turn out. This thing is huge. It probably couldn't eat a human in a single sitting but could probably polish it off in a day or so. it is so big that the base won't all fit on the two pence pieces that I use for basing.

All in all, I think it was worth the money. I am happy with what I got. The story book is a nice touch and I am sure that I will read it but I would have preferred something a bit more useful (I mean more lead). The wallpapers they provide, well they are okay I guess. I'll never use them and I can't help thing that this was a useless incentive and almost like they were looking for something to give away.

Gobal Whining

I realise that I am currently contributing to the phenomenon I call global whining a lot. Global whining is getting to be a major problem in this world and maybe, like me, you need to consider your whining foot print to. But after getter my phone back fully charged, it's still not charging so I have to spend another day sorting it out. I did have a chance to take some pictures though.

I got these done very quickly. I seemed to spend a lot of time painting them black at the start which kind of decries from what I was saying a few days ago. As they are largely chain mail, this made them fairly easy to paint. I have run out of glue so haven't been able to put the shield on. Another thirty minutes work for the bases and shield should see them done.

My productivity at the moment seems to be remaining high and I have a real urge to paint at the moment. Trouble is I want to paint zombies not dark age stuff.