Start Of The Week - Bindependence Day

So a quite pivotal or comical week in the UK. Depending on your point of view. No great outcome either way. An object lesson in irony appears to be about to happen.

Still, back in the real world of tiny toy soldiers. It's more about the ruins of post-apocalyptic London than pre-apocalyptic Clacton. So I have another ten minis for sUnderDground. These are much more of a mish mash. I am seeing these as more of a citizen militia. Prepped, primed and ready to go. Mostly Warlord stuff. A few bits are off the covers of magazines. There is a Pulp nazi scientist. He didn't really fit in with other stuff.

I am looking at my recent purchases. The Quar cavalry and the Paranoia stuff. I need to do some some work on the Paranoia bases. Design them and get them cut out. This is not the week to do this. Maybe I will find the time.

So maybe the Quar. The photo above may even be a tenuous clue. I have a box of each. When I get to establishing a plan, this is probably not enough. The Coftyran infantry (in my head) is based around ten man squads. Three groups of three and a sergeant. In an ideal world I'd want two of these an officer, sergeant and standard. Which would be three boxes. 

I would also like a few mounted regular infantry. An officer (one of these with an infantry officer helmet. A few extras like a sergeant, standard an a 3 man recon team or two. So four boxes. For each side. With the plan as it is I guess I am nudging another £300. I'm looking for a half set of each as twelve of each seems to hit the sweet spot 

Queue the sound of gears grinding and the smell of burning rubber. The plan is still the XCOM Miniatures Game all the way.

I see my future busy weeks being a little extended. Visitors, friends and family are all in the mix in the weeks after the summer. Happy for it all. I can see me keeping with the plan and I don't see the volume of painting going up. At this pace, with the currently active plans, I can see a gap in the queue around March. Assuming the XCOM doesn't jump to the front of the queue. Which it probably will.

End Of The Week (15)

A strange day today. It would have been my mum's birthday. So a number of moments of sadness. Whilst it has been some time since she passed, I still think about her every day. Things have moved on, but I still miss her.

So I hit my target. Things are progressing. The New Cruelty should be more than happy. The New Cruelty if you friend or is that the Computer. Some of the Paranoia minis are done. I am already thinking I need some more investigators. And all the other stuff. This is a project that has some legs. 

The fascists came out alright. For fascists anyway. I am trying for the convoluted mix of kit. This seems to have worked. With the corpses I will call this 12 for the week. 

I've seen a few things new for Blood Bowl. All big guys and all needed for one team or another. The is a Morg 'n' Thoth has been missing from collection, at least as far as a new figure. I mostly play chaos in all its forms so the other two figures, a rat ogre and a minotaur, fit my plan. I need to pick a team to paint this year. So, having had Varag Ghoul Chewer on the bench for around three years (the ultimate background project). Not to mention he is now almost six years in the queue. I finished the one missing detail and the base.

I also found an odd peasant from the villagers pack by Wargames Atlantic. She is now done. So I am going to call this 15 minis for the week.

There are a couple of projects in the offing. In keeping with the usual form, I will probably decide tomorrow. Or the next day. 

Slow But Steady

I have a bit more time on my hands today. Sadly. But it does mean I have finished the project for the week. Which gives me a bit of time to work on the other stuff. For some reason I am struggling to keep one of the arms attached. Need to find some spruegoo.

I want to do some work with green stuff. If nothing else I want to fill in the gaps for the wrecked ship. It feels like I can experiment a bit with it before starting the, er, not cracked one. That one won't look pristine either. Just not wrecked. I have a bit of gap filling to do on the last of the Athena Miniatures survivors.

Then I am already giving the Paranoia minis and the Quar Wars cavalry the eye. I've stuff prepped for a few more weeks at least. But. Well. You know. I should probably do these before I get the green stuff out.

I have some Normans on the bench. These are currently an alternative background project. These were painted by someone else but I need to do a bit of work on them. These needed a bit more texture on the base. So this is done now.

Wasting Money

Do I keep looking at the XCOM miniatures game. It's not a question of if, but when I am going to buy it. Where was this game ten years ago? It looks like I might have to order the resin sets as the inner ADHD in my brain (it is fairly deep) is telling me I can't wait to the new year.

I've kept looking at a couple of other projects. The first is already underway, which is the Quar. I might just have to rename it Quar Wars in my head. I'm not really wanting to start another army but I do want to finish what I have started. Which I am thinking comes get to £200. After this purchase.

As I was looking at another project, I thought I would get something else. To save on postage. Obviously. Duh. So the last thing to be produced for both armies was the cavalry. More like dragoons really. So a box of each was in order. Eight figures is an odd number for a cavalry box but then they are mounted and dismounted. I think this is not going to be enough, so I will probably pick up a half set of each.

As I say, I've been looking at the XCOM stuff. A lot more than is healthy. But whilst I was looking at that I also started looking at the Modiphius Paranoia stuff. Another miniatures game also using the 5 Core rules as their basis. So I got a good deal on what I ordered. I couldn't get the robots and the high programmer set seems to be a little bit expensive. So I will wait for a sale.

I've not had a chance to go through the rules yet, but I am already thinking about terrain. As it's set in a bunker, I am not sure I have a lot of terrain that will work. A while ago I was working on a set of laser cut sci finish corridors with the intention of also using them as bases. Something interlocking, almost like the stuff from Imperial Assault and Descent. There would be two layers of MDF. A base layer, to allow an interlock and maybe a slight change of layer underneath a textured layer. Need to have a think about this. How to represent a bunker on a three by three table? I wonder.

That's another 66 figures (by my calculation system) to add to the queue. 

Accidents Will Happen

Sounds like a cue for a song.

This model originally had wings. And a tailfin. And engines for that matter. Not to mention wheels. The first one I got even had some but not all of them. This one was always destined to be a wreck.

So far I have cleaned off the clips that hold the bay doors open. Now I have to figure out how to keep the pod bay doors closed (Hal). There were also some mounting points for the wheels. The things you can do with a mini tenon saw.

The plan is to fill in some of of the gaps. I think I am going to take a mold of some of the tail fin from the other model. This should make it look like it was ripped off. There is a plan to cover the voids where the wings were with plasticard or, more likely, some clear plastic packaging (I think I have some stuff that is up to the job. 

Just above the wing void are some hinges. These look like they will be tricky to remove. Not impossible but a pain. So the plan calls for the voids in the hinges to be filled and I will use some plastic tubes to cover the long void rather than filling it in.

This looks like it will need a fairly big base. I want it to look like it crashed so I want the base to have skid marks. Currently thinking I will have it sliding sideways.

It needs a better clean. Probably with alcohol. Then some gentle sanding. This should help with the adherence of the paint.

This is not the biggest project ever. I have another one, which I want to set up as landed. I have a rather large ARC fight, some obscure version of a TIE fighter and a U Wing coming. I am hoping to turn the U Wing into a landed ship. The TIE fighter has scrap terrain written all over it. Maybe one of the panels will end up on the floor. The ARC fighter looks big. I need to have a look at it. Maybe it will work if I take the wings off. More scrap piles and another piece of flooring.

The End Of The Weekend / Start Of The Week (10)

I got my ten minis in. So I am happy. Fairly good that they were mostly green. A coloured primer and 'contrast" paint helped a lot. I've already shown some pictires so I'm not going to bother here.

Some more sabot bases done too. Last of these for now at least. Just some I had sat around gathering dust. Mostly, if not entirely Warlord Miniatures this week.

Found two random, but identical second hand toys this week. The most battered was obviously the most expensive, and the one I found first. I've been after something to use as a drop ship. Now I have a drop ship and one that could be a wreck. I am getting a Traveller ship's boat mixed with a space shy.

I've started working on one of them already. Needs some filler and some extra paneling. Then I can start jazzing it up.

Anyway. Off for a daddy daughter day.

Day Of Admin Rather Than Progress

I've always thought it's better to have a plan. I used to regularly say that failing to plan is planning to fail. Then kids came on the scene and it became failing to plan saves me about twenty minutes of wasted time every day. This is said tongue in cheek. It doesn't really apply to gaming. As far as kids are concerned, it is good to have a plan. Just don't expect it to happen.

So it's not been a bad day. The game of the day has been prep and admin. I've found some more sabot bases. As I plan to do some more painting of these, it seemed appropriate to finish these off all together. 

There are some more sUnderDground minis ready for next week. These are planned to be fascists. So some Warlord Einter Germans from various sets. There are some zombies in the mix too. Somewhere I found a Eureka Bundeswehr. This should be another quick project. There are a couple of civilian (well armed civilian) casualties.

The sUnderDground project looks like an ongoing project. So there are a few more primed minis. These are a bit more of a mixed bag. Americans, Japanese, Germans and Brits. And a few zombies.

I got these from a car boot a few weeks ago. I like the guy, who I see fairly regularly. Always has something I want. A few more dark age minis can't hurt right? I'm not a big fan of the metallic blue (although it would be amazing as a colour for magic weapons) and there are a few bits that I need to look at to make them fit with my stuff.

Maybe I can get to doing something a bit more productive.

The blog seems to be doing okay. I mean the number of posts is up again. So I must be in an up phase. Will see how that goes. The last year has seen a third of the sites total hits. I must be affecting the outcome of everyone's AI searches.