Thursday, 25 February 2021

Twice In A Month - Well Almost, Time For Painting And Terrain

For the second time in about a month I have found myself on involuntary lockdown. This time there has been nothing wrong with me. So stuck in and away from work and family I have tried to make the most of it. There was even a little bit of progress.

I am still not really feeling the urge to paint. That said I have managed to get a load of stuff primed. This includes not only my recent purchases but some stuff going back decades. In some cases more than two of them. It's a real mixed bag of stuff. Big guys, small guys, very big guys. I have ordered a load of fantasy stuff. Most is for the Viking Game. This included a load of female vikings. I also got hold of a load of female dwarves to round out my desire to be able to do at least one of every race, class and gender. I got somes elves too. Not quite so many though. The dwarves and elves are all from Bad Squidoo. I have wood elves and dark elves but want light elves. My plan calls for a slightly more ornate dark age armour so I settled on Romano-British / early Saxon. This might just happen this year.

I have some much loved, very old GW hobbits. I spent good money buying them up off eBay almost twenty years ago. Sadly, they just don't do it for me in what I have planned. There are only a few poses and no female figures. If I want to stick with the plan then I needed an alternative. So I looked to the stuff done by Mark Copplestone. This includes the Copplestone Castings stuff and the stuff he did for Grenadier. I have been waiting for these since December. I've already done some conversions. With what is on it's way I may even convert a few into Titansgrave. There is also some stuff from Macrocosm in there.

I don't really do D&D so I don't have a need for a whole range of odd, made-up, races. That said I don't include gnomes in this. Thinking back I don't know anyone who have played a gnome on tabletop. Ian played lying cheating, thief of a gnome illusionist (aka Tim the enchanter thief). This is even harder although I do have a plan.

The variety seemed to motivate me last year. Excuse me, the year before last. That said I am really having a hard time finding the head space to do this as family life is getting some most of my attention. No bad thing. 

Big battles have always been what I have aimed for but I am beginning to see that this isn't really on the cards for me. Even the games I have been buying have been skirmish games. A lot of the figures I have purchased in the last year or some have been post apocalyptic / sci-fi / cyberpunk. Withe the Cyberpunk game coming out closely followed by Reality's Edge I thought 2021 might be the year Cyberpunk as a genre came back to the fore. I would really like to give Malifaux a try to but nobody is remotely interested.

Still thinking it may happen but I am personally feeling This Is Not  A Test and Last Days. All of these are skirmish games so I am pepping enough terrain for this. This will hopefully include some 3" by 3" boards (well given how I have it planned its more likely to be 93cm by 93cm). I have a lot of boards planned so they need to be fairly thin and lightweight. If I have it right in my head these will be double sided.

Another thing in my head is to do suited terrain. Obviously a green board is the place to start but I can see winter, deserts, bare earth and a few post-apocalyptic boards to start. There are about another dozen or so ideas floating around in my head. 

When the shops reopen I will get on with this but in the meantime I have spent looking at terrain. I have some trees brought years ago. These all need basing so some woodland bases with detachable trees seemed like a good idea. 

Bushes are also something I want to do. I think bushes were the first bit of terrain I ever tried to do in the form of gluing lichen to flocked card. I have hated lichen ever since. Thanks to YouTube I have a few ideas. Not convinced I will get what I want out of it but I will give it a try. I was prepping some bases on my mini-band saw and I have managed to bust it. I think the band has just come off so I am hoping it will be an easy fix.