The Grey (Well Mostly Grey) Legion

After my last post I got to thinking. It's almost a road to Damascus moment for me. Over the last year I have probably primed and based hundreds of figures. It made me think about how many I had left. My gut told me that there would be quite a few.

I was surprised when I dug them all out. Surprise may be a bit if an understatement. When I looked at the part finished terrain and eventually chose not to look at the part finished figures.

So this was the first picture.

If you think about it, if you have a picture like this then you have probably got ten or twenty times the amount as unpainted minis.

This isn't individually but then look at the panorama shot.

Then there was a second panorama shot.

From here I moved onto terrain but maybe more of that another day. This was no less of an uplifting exercise. Maybe this was a call to arms for me.

The truth is this isn't even all of it. Some of it is so far buried I couldn't even lay my hands on it. It makes me sad. Perhaps the most saddening thing is that I haven't really got many of the projects actually finished.

I have been sat here much less regularly over the last two years. For a good, now 18 month year old reason. So with what little time I do have, I am going to use it a bit more wisely. Maybe finish some projects and banish the grey from my tabletop.

From where I am sat this has been a worth while project. Maybe you should do the same. So I am calling you all out. Bloggers or not. It is time to look at your unfinished projects and start making a dent in the backlog.   

Robots

My bench is currently full. It's mostly full of paint and part finished projects. There is a fair amount of space dedicated to what I call the grey legion. These are figures that have taken the time to prep, glue to a base, cover the base with sand, prime and allow to be covered with dust.

Don't get me wrong, there are plenty that have made it as far as work in progress. I found some old figures that I thought I could upgrades little with all that I have learnt over the years, so technically they have been WIP for thirty five years. Still they are mostly at the stage where they still look a bit crap.

So the perfect thing to do was start to paint even more figures. So being geared up for Stargrave I decided to go back to the post-apocalypse. I think you can use robots in Stargrave too, but I didn't find that out until after I'd finished them.

Copplestone castings is one of my favourite miniature makers. I recall adding a few things in to make a price point. One of which was a pack of robots which were quite like Terminators. Rather than pairing them as shiny death machine I thought an aged look would fit my post-apocalypse better.

So here we are. A quick and dirty paint job. Looks fine to me. A few more bits to do, washes, varnish and a bit more debris on the base and they are done

Stargrave, Fallout and Wargames Illustrated 402

My other half kindly gave me a copy of the latest Wargames Illustrated. Most, if not all, issues now come with a sprue of miniatures. This month it was Romans from Warlord Miniatures. Much as I like free stuff, I don't really do Ancients.

Then I remembered an idea for a project I had a decade ago. Fallout: New Vegas featured a group called Caesar's Legion. They featured in some of the deep lore if the game. So when it came to seeing my attempt at a tabletop rpg background set in Arizona, these seemed to be a natural choice as the looming big bad. That game was really done in 15mm but I wanted to do this in 28mm again.

So I have some free  Roman figures. I have a bunch of extra arms  from Stargrave and some equipment. Couple this with a few hours to myself and a knife. I doubt they are perfect but what the hell.

Stargrave

Life has a habit of getting in the way if gaming. Still I have found North Star getting in the way of saving money. Most of my figure purchasing budget has been through them or one of their subsidiaries.

I like the idea of Stargrave but didn't get the rules. I will probably get round to it but will wait until it gets to be a little cheaper. They figures tho seemed like a pretty good deal and that was before the stretch goals.  Over the years I have spent a lot of time putting plastic minis together and this was one of the better experiences. Two handed weapons seem to have arms that fit together very nicely. As with other Northstar kits the figures are perhaps in the smaller end but they more than make up for this by the number of option choices. 

It's left me with enough bits from two frames to do two frames of gnolls, a project I have been meaning to do since I got the original gnoll set. If anything it's the sci-fi gnolls that gave really got my interest.

Given a bit if time I might get round to actually painting them and maybe doing a few more warbands