Midweekish Madness

I got tired of waiting for the bulbs to arrive. Having been told it would be Friday, they arrived the following day, whilst I was out. Given the new delivery date of Saturday I purchased another bulb as I happened to be in a shop. Today was a good day for painting.

So I made some progress. I even tried to stick with the plan. My primary target was to finish off the remaining minis from short arse week and even a pig I missed from the week before. It would definitely have benefitted from being stripped and started again but what the hell. There are two left and these just need details.

Then I wanted to make progress on the Blood Bowl Skaven. These are still a long way off but I think I am a lot closer to having a finished first layer. There is still some tidying up to do and they are a bit bobby.

Looking forward I need a plan for next week. I have been looking at This Quar's War all week. The bingo plan calls for a complete army. Being the latest shiny thing, they could fit the bill. In reality I had kind of promised myself that the army, and probably enough figures to do two forces, was going to be Sludge. So I finally put them in the queue. I had done a few test paint jobs and these made it into the job lot. Plus a bodyguard. As this is an army paint scheme, I anticipate this will take a week. They are not short arses but I guess the surface area is a little less than most of the stuff I have painted recently. Then I have the urge to paint the Viking minis, especially the horses.

After I finished this I had a massive migraine. I suspect this is going to put me off painting and pretty much everything else for a few days.

The First Day OF The New, New Cruelty

I started out with the idea to do bingo to keep me motivated for the year. It works for other people, so why not give it a try. So I woke up and got on with it. I was looking at a good way to kick start the year. I have had a tin filled with work in process minis stuck on old GW paint pots which have sat there for at least two years. Some of them have taken a little bit of a bashing and they were all covered in fluff. 

For the last month or so they have been the background project. To the uninitiated this is something on the bench that isn't my primary project but is  something I started to paint with my usual gusto that has gotten lost with the appearance of the new shiny. Generally they only get touched when I have some spare paint on the palette.

So as per the rules of bingo, I have finished the backlog, painted ten minis and have achieved a bonus by painting ten more. As the rules call for figures completed in 2025, with the emphasis on finished, I am claiming three boxes. I can claim 106 items so if I keep up this pace I will hit my target by early February. Ah got to love the hubris of a New Years resolution.

Just to annoy myself I have lost a Wookie. Not a full sized one obviously. There should be four and I can only find three. There is more Star Wars Legion stuff coming. I think tomorrow I will finish a good chunk of these done.

Painting The Grenadiers, Now Technically Mirliton Miniatures

As time goes by I have gotten better at painting and whilst, I am no professional, I do okay at painting 28mm figures. Well I think so. The trouble with getting better is that everything takes that bit longer. When I was painting 15mm minis, which I used to do a lot, I could get ten figures done in an afternoon and they would look okay. I dare say if I worked all day I could paint ten 28mm figures fairly well. Sadly I never get all day.

A mixed bag. Reaper. Foundry, Grenadier, Foundry again and Grenadier again.

Last week was a bit of a bump for my painting plans. It was not the best week all round. This week, whilst better, is still looking like hard work. Today is looking like the only day I am going to get to do much. So I guess it's good I managed to finish enough figures to complete last week's target and this week's target as well. Then there is about another dozen or so that are pretty close to completion and another twenty based, primed and ready to go.

So as I can't paint I am watching YouTube. For the last couple of days I have been wanting to watch the original Dawn Of The Dead. It's still a classic and the benchmark for anything to do with zombies ever since. All in all not a bad night.

This should be the archetype for my next zombie

End Or Start Of The Week

This has not been my most productive week of miniature painting. It's still Easter weekend so I am calling this the end and start of the week and my habit is to review the week.

I only managed to get four figures finished from last week's roster. This fell short of my usual target of five figures. Given that I am repainting an titivating some figures I had much higher expectations. That said it has been an exceptionally crap week. Stuff has been going on this week and it's not been good. It's also a bad anniversary for me which has caused me to have an almost total lack of focus. Still there is a chance that I can catch up this week as a lot of the other figures I started are pretty close to being finished. The New Cruelty is not happy.

Assuming that I am going to get somewhere with these figures, there is another bunch of figures to do. Whilst I was having a sort out the other week I came across a bunch of mutants which I think are Mongoose Miniatures Judge Dread Muties. These were done well over a decade ago and are pretty bad, hence the picture being at a bit of a distance. These should improve quite nicely.

On the health front I have managed a 5k run this week. Not my fastest performance ever but I managed it. The second one I have managed since taking my health a bit more seriously. After all that I can safely say that I am the lightest I have been this decade. So on balance I have managed to get through the week.

So The End Of The Week (Is Nigh)

So I have painted some more Future Skirmish Savages and I am quite happy with them. They are nicely complicated models which have given me a whole load of ideas. Whilst I have been painting them I have also been writing up a bit of a background for them as well. I am mainly thinking about my sUnderdground background as I have been going along. This has also inspired me to do a similar background for the Cultists I did a few weeks ago. Which in turn lead to ideas about raiders, cleansers, bygones (mutated neanderthal/chimpanzee ish throwbacks), crazies and wilders. These should all fit in with my figure painting plans. I have also been painting some other Grenadier figures. Sadly I am not so happy with them.

My plan is to get some more but money is a bit tight at the moment so I might have to put that plan off for a bit. Another five or six of the right figures would be enough to have all the savages I might want.

During the week I was doing some sorting out and found most of the rest of the Copplestone / Grenadier figures I have. I have started work on some of them and have some more for next week. This has given me a bit of a first world problem. I have started using old GW plastic bases for sci-fi stuff lately but all the older stuff is on 2p sized bases. This is kicking me in my aesthetic core.

Anyway The New Cruelty is happy. I have finished eight figures this week and there are a load of figures very close to being done. I also have some stuff I want to work on now. I have managed to get most of my health goals done with the odd near miss. I haven't spent much, if any, time playing video games this week. This has given me time to do the writing.

The post-apocalypse vibe is pulling me in again. I am looking at figures and even thinking in terms of terrain in a serious way. In part I am think about Summerland and Underground but even Fallout would be a nice game to get back into although that would have to be a different game than I originally had planned. My original game had involved a lot of big battles and I am not sure how I would manage to get hold of the number of figures (I think it was over two hundred) that I would need. That said, I have other projects on the go that I currently have figures for.

So next week is looking like more of the old Grenadier / Copplestone stuff and maybe planning some terrain.

Detailing And Moving Onto The Next Project

The Future Savages are doing okay. They don't seem to have gotten especially more detailed but I seem to have worked on them for ages.

Perhaps I have spent too much time trying to figure out what to do next. The background projects are still there but they are not really keeping my interest. There are plenty of figures available to paint, most of them are part of what I expected to be much bigger projects. I have a Skaven Blood Bowl Team but I am missing a load of players so I don't want to start it.

So I went ambling around trying to find some more storage space and I found some more Grenadier figures (and a few Foundry figures as well). These were painted quite a while ago. More recently than some of the other Grenadier figures I have put up on the blog. So I guess that I am looking at some more repaints. I seem to remember doing them in a hurry about five years ago. I am hoping that they will look okay with a bit more work and hopefully my skills have improved a little. At the time I was painting almost exclusively 15mm figures and I have learnt a lot about painting 28mm since.

Tomorrow I am hoping to finish off the Savages and more onto at least some of the above figures.

Future Savages

These are more of the old Grenadier (Mirliton/Moonraker) Future Skirmish Savages which I want to use in my sUnderdground game. I have decided that I really like the aesthetic and thought about getting some more. When I worked out what this would cost (along with what I would order from Copplestone) the cost came out to well over £300 for about 200 figures. So not a project for this year and the apparent shortages of funds.

The figures have progress nicely. I am already at the ink stage and have a few more colours to do. Then on to the highlighting. So currently reasonably confident that these will be finished before the week is out. Then it would be a case of working out what to move onto next.

Beginning The Process All Over Again

So I have eight figures from the old Grenadier Future Skirmish range to repaint. Not happy about the fact that they are repaints but I am hoping that might make it easier. Last week's experience says that there are pros and cons, maonly cons.

I like the figures and the Mark Copplestone sculpting vibe in general. Obviously there is plenty in this range and a lot of almost identical stuff in the Copplestone Castings Range. There is enough choice of figures for me to do a lot of what I want. I can see me revisiting these figures in the near future.

These figures should not take too long. As my plan has been  to clear my workbench I wasn't expecting there to be too much to do. It is clear that I am already developing a whole load of new background projects to fill in any gaps I might have.

End Of The (Most Productive) Week

This week has not really been about  painting 28mm miniatures. It's been about  me finishing of what I have started. Whilst I haven't finished off every half painted figure on the bench, I have come pretty close. Some are abandoned rather than finished but not in bad condition all the same.

A couple of years ago I got these Grenadier tribal type figures from a bring and buy. There are fifteen of them in all so these are the first batch. I am not generally a big fan of repainting figures but I thought at the time I could maybe strip them. Upon close inspection I thought that the paint might be enamel so I decided against it. Repaints rarely turn out especially well (see the Grenadier figures a few weeks ago) but these didn't turn out especially badly. From a distance they look okay.

The Blood Bowl troll has been sat around since the beginning of last year. I have fiddled with it every now and again. So in the spirit of what I am doing I decided to add some finishing details. I could go a lot further with this figure but I think it is time to call it a day.

There is a whole load of scatter terrain to finish off from earlier in the week. This is what I have finished so far. Most of this is relatively recent although I think the well was brought in the mid nineties. Some is Ainsty, some Scotia, some Midlam and some Ristul Market. Just glad to have them done really.

The stone monster (golem or construct) is a Reaper Bones mini. I have painted one of these before. It's a nice easy paint job. I got this at the last show I went to in December.

The de-bearded carrion crawlers came from a D&D boardgame that I got at a fete for a pound a couple of years ago. Realistically I think these were the only two figures worth having from the set and I suspect the rest of the game, with maybe the odd exception. The type of plastic is a bigger to paint but I have learnt a few new tricks since starting on this.

I painted four actual fantasy miniatures this week. Three dwarves and a human priest. The dwarves are two from Midlam and one from Northstar and I think the cleric is from Gripping Beast. Some of these were not actually on the bench and the blacksmith and king had only been started recently but in my head they still count. I guess none of these are more than three years old.

The Ver'men (not Skaven) priest was started this week. I found myself with some paint to spare. Just a quick no frills paint job. I have a few more of these guys hanging around and I am not sure that I am that inspired to paint them but I can see them on the bench already. I think I got these last year or the year before.

Finally there are four Cold War Miniatures zombies. Nice minis but a little bit small compared to some. They do however fit with a lot of newer minis and you cannot fault them for character. The figures are probable ten plus years old and have been on the bench for at least five years.

As far as The New Cruelty goes this has been my best week for ages. I would argue that I have completed the equivalent of twenty five figures this week. I have done a fair bit of exercise this week including my first 5k run in over 7 years. I have kept up on the less vigorous exercise and kept to my step count. I have played one boardgame and I have even managed to do a blog post every day this week, for the first time this year I think. The New Cruelty is satisfied. Ish.

There Was A Reason For This Post

I remember waking up with a really good idea for a post this morning. I should have written it down. The day has worked out quite well and I think I am getting closer to my eventual painting goal for the week. At close of play today I am pretty relaxed about there being almost no half painted figures on the workbench. Oddly, I am less relaxed because I have no clear plan for the next project. This morning I spent a bit of time trying to figure out what to do next. Having gone through all the figure storage draws I have, I drew a complete blank.

Despite saying I was going to finish everything off before starting something else I have found another three figures to paint. Both had kind of been started but almost nothing had been done. They did get finished very quickly although they were easy paint jobs really. To be honest I am not sure if they spoke to me or I just had some spare paint that suited them so I started them.

I am wracking my brains for what to do next so I went back on the blog to look for my annual The Plan post from last year yesterday. This is turning into a somewhat frugal year for me. So no new figures and all I see are figures that I want to buy.

So the current plan is I have some more of these old Grenadier (now Mirliton) tribal figures to re-paint. I did think about striping them but I am never sure that this is a good idea having had a couple of very bad (read costly and psychically painful) experiences with stripping figures so I have stick with the repaints. My plan for the was originally for the Fallout  game. The game has a number of tribal groupings which are essentially native American on origin but not exclusively so. These figures give a nice evocation of that. The plan had been to get some Apache figures from Artizan. I already have a few of them but wanted to do a bit of conversion as well to make them look more the part. Another game I have worked on was a game set in a post-apocalyptic London called Underground and these figures would be perfect for that. Maybe Titansgrave as well.

This all got me back to one of my biggest problems at the moment, admittedly it's a first world problem. I don't have the time for it and I don't have any regular people to play with. Most of my inspiration comes from playing console and PC games and, thanks the the missus, my console has been disconnected since November. My head is constantly flowing with ideas for games and they all want to come out but there is currently no outlet for it.

Maybe I should get back to Fallout or some form of post-apocalypse gaming. Over the years I has really been my first love. Fantasy RPG is good and I like my Viking Game  but it's the events after a disaster that make my RPG mojo let loose.

So, after a little bit of using the blog as therapy, maybe I will get back to dealing with the apocalypse then.

It's Proving To Be A Far From Steller Week

Not the worst week in my life but I have been unhappy about the way a lot of things are going with my hobby life. This is the third attempt at this post as I have been blue screen of death'ed twice. I lost a whole load of work on my Viking game as well which I have had to redo. Mainly though, it's the painting.

Still work in progress

I started the week with a simple plan. There are nine figures, mostly part painted and what was left only needed a few bits doing to them. Having finished ten old Grenadier figures last week, I had some others that had been hanging around for years. As well as a few more soldiers, there were some agents and a couple of armed civilians. Most in a part painted state and the others were primed black. Experience tells me that figures primed black do not end up well but they were that way when I got them. So rather than create problems I opted to keep them in a black uniform. To be honest I haven't been overjoyed with the results. Still tomorrow is another day and I am hoping that I can bring them around.

But there is a limit to how much you can polish somethings

It is a little bit therapeutic in a way. These figures have been float around for a long time (1990 I am thinking) and whilst I was given some of these, I think they all came from the same shop about the same time. Because they are fairly generic, I can see a lot of uses for them. Modern is the most obvious use, but things like Fallout, Titansgrave, Shadowrun, Conspiracy-X and any number of post-apocalypse and sci-fi backgrounds are also out there.

There are some other figures on the bench, which I have also been playing around with. My secondary focus has been on these fantasy/dark age miniatures for the Viking/Skyrim game. I think one is Gripping Beast and the others are Westwind. Although there is still some work to do, I am much happier with these than the Grenadier stuff.

Keep On Moving On

I spent a little bit of time finishing off last week's Troopers this afternoon. They are still not really finished. Every time I look at them I find some new detail that is missing. So, I am doing a few more figures from the same range so I will keep working on them alongside those.

I am now contemplating getting some more of them. They are cheap enough. I have a few poses that are missing from this set and some that are being painted in an alternate pattern (which I will probably post tomorrow). This puts me in mind of some of the other stuff I want to buy (like gnomes, halflings and pictish dwarves) but the workbench is already quite full.

End Of The Week - And I Am Kind Of Glad

The painting of the Grenadier / Mirliton trooper miniatures has continued and whether they are used for Shadow, Cyberpunk, Fallout, Titansgrave or some other post-apocalypse, near-future or sci-fi background remains to be seen. I am enjoying painting them and I do like the Copplestone vibe about the figures but they are not done yet.

If you look carefully you will see that there actually are some differences between this picture and the last one

Sadly The New Cruelty will not be satisfied this week as I have only finished of the two Mimic figures this week. They are fairly close to being finished with almost all the blocking out and inking done and the highlights to go. If all I do next week is finish these off then I will still be well ahead of my goal. Until tonight I don't think I have done any work on them since Thursday. This is a shame as I was hopeful that they would be all finished by now. It's been a kack kind of week towards the end with the only highlight being getting out on Friday. This has not been helped by being ill for the last couple of days. I did manage to get to FabLab once although I didn't do anything. When I was there I did find out that it was going to be open more often so that might make things easier for me. I have a few plans for this but not so sure what I can do at the moment.

Maybe it has been watching The Vikings TV series but I have a feel for my Northmen, norse esque game at the moment. I have had another play about with adding some background again.

Health wise I am doing okay. I was thinking I feel fitter this week although I don't seem to have lost any weight. My fitbit is telling me that despite missing my calorie goal a few times it was not actually a bad week (not the best but doable especially as I have been feeling ill and a bit peed off). A while back I realised that I was lactose intolerant and just of late I have come to think I am gluten intolerant as well. As an experiment this week I have tried to stay of anything with gluten in it. It seems that when I have had gluten I have paid a fairly high price.

The Work (In Pogress) Continues

When I got up this morning I decided that I was going to paint ten of the old Grenadier (now Mirliton) trooper figures. Nice simple figures with an almost standard uniform that even if I do give certain aspects of it a camouflage pattern, should be done by the end of the week.

 Then I picked up the two D&D mimic figures I picked up last week. Then I thought what the hell, I'll do these first. So I did. When you have a small number of essentially similar figures, they are quick and easy to do so I just got on with them. I guess each of them took about an hour to an hour and a half to finish. In the round, and certainly on the tabletop, the look pretty good.

When they were done I went back to the troopers. They have progressed a little bit. All the boots, equipment and uniform are finished. To be honest I haven't made up my mind what I am going to do with the armour and helmet yet although I have an idea (does anyone remember Aliens). Given that a lot of what I am doing is vaguely desert, I think I will go for something like MTP/Multicam. I do like the Copplestone vibe.

These figures have all sorts of potential uses for me. Aside from the standard sci-fi, 2300, Stargrunt, Titansgrave Tomorrow's War ad Traveller, I can see a use for them in other genres. The armour would look pretty good for combat armour for Fallout. They have planned uses in some post apocalypse stuff as well. Maybe even as soldiers in a super hero game.

This is more for my benefit so I can go back and remember what colours I used if I decide to do any more

End Of The Week (That Was) - Good News/Bad News

This has not been a bad week all round on the painting front. Along the way I have managed to get  ten sci-fi dwarf figures painted to a reasonably good tabletop standard. To my amazement this only took about three days.

The plan after that had been to finish off the chaos cultists I have for Titansgrave and any number of post-apocalyptic projects which might become a Scrappers game. The figures had already been put together but the bases needed flocking and the figures themselves needed priming. So with this done they were ready to paint. Then the real world got in the way in the form of my other half developing a bad back and the cat being ill. This has delayed me for a bit. Although I have managed to get some painting done today the cat has again taken my seat.

So with the week that comes I have the chaos cultists to finish. I have made a good start on these already so I am confident that this will be done by mid week (assuming the cat does not get in the way). If things go my way there are another half dozen space dwarves to finish off. Next weekend I am away at funeral so I doubt much will get finished if I have to leave it until then so I won't aim to over achieve.

After that I have the miniatures for Star Saga to do. These arrived the other day and I guess I will get round to posting some pictures of them in due time. All the Star Saga stuff will form part of the X-Com and Titansgrave projects so are probably going to get pushed to the top of the list. There are also some old Grenadier (now Mirliton) troopers which I have been tinkering with, Basically another background project to be painted any time I have some paint I don't want to go to waste.

Next week I am going to start do some RPGing again on Monday night. It's Rogue Trader, not my prefered game (well I have never played it so I am open minded about it). At least it will get me back into the swing of things. I am hoping to get back to FabLab at least on Thursday.

So the New Cruelty is satisfied. I have hit my painting target. I have hit all my exercise goals every day and a bit more besides. I have even managed a game this week. Well done me.

Dwarven Dark Mages

Dark Mages

RPG characters are currently my thing but these are something I finished these what seems like an age ago. I wasn't going to post the pictures because they are a little overdue but then I remembered telling the guys at Midlam Miniatures that I would post the pictures. These are their Dwarven Dark Mages (the clue is in the title of the post).

Gratuitous size comparison

This is a close up of one of the above and I also painted some old Grenadier dwarves which are currently produced by Mirliton Miniatures. I liked the way the guy in purple turned out and the jeweled rings end up looking pretty good on the table.Anything that can fit into a dark age setting, especially if it's vaguely Viking does me well.

Grenadier Dwarves

Four more grenadier dwarves. I think these were a good buy on eBay when I got them. I got a really nice mix of miniatures without any duplicates rather than buying so multi packs and specialists which would have cost me a lot. I had a few grenadier dwarves from back in the day. I liked them then and there are not too many that can compare even today. Some of the Midlam figures can be a little on the small side (less than heroic scale) but these dwarves work very well with the rest of my collection.

Easter Monday

Family are round. I can't do much but I guess I can find the time to put a blog post together. Sadly, I have had to put all my toys away as the visitors might get bored, distracted, shocked or injured or any of the above or, more likely, none of the above at all.

So in the process of moving house, I have found some figures that have been hanging around for a while. I know some of them are still in production but most of these have been sat on my bench or someone else's lead pile for many years.

I think it's Alternative Armies

The first figure is a wizards assistant carrying all sorts of equipment. it is part of a wizard's traveling group which had a wizard, apprentice and mule. I am not sure what he is supposed to be, half ogre perhaps? I have always struggled with the idea of half ogres as I guess they are the equivalent  the off spring of a dachshund and a wolfhound. I am not sure about the genetics but the practicality of the matter would be difficult. Anyway. I started doing this figure maybe ten years ago and I think I have had it for twenty years now. So I guess it's about time I finished it and hopefully I will do it justice now. It is a really busy figure which I think is what put me off. I will finish off the blocking out and see what happens.

This figure is a bit of a mystery. It is very old. I have no idea who made it or even where I got it from although I assume it was eBay. I think it's a male figure but as it is a 25mm figure it is a bit small. One of the  problems I find with older figures is that there isn't a lot of detail to play about with. It makes my usual inking and highlighting a bit more of a challenge. I am sure "she" will make a nice evil mage.

This picture is a mixed bag of demi-humans. The one on the left is a halfman (halfling). It is an original grenadier mini that is currently being produced by Mirliton. He is a bit blue at the moment but I have barely touched these minis yet. I have a few of them I painted about ten years ago. I have some old GW hobbits which I am happy with and like, so I use these as gnomes. You just have to hide the feet. Decent gnome figures are hard to come by. Not that anyone ever uses gnomes.

The one in light blue is a bit of a mystery as is the one on the left. Judging by the age and size I thought chronicle or denizen but as far as I can make out this is wrong. If I was desperate I would give it a blast on the forums. The one on the right could pass as a monk, cleric or even wizard. I don't have a dwarven cleric or monk so I am just rounding out the collection. the other one could pass as pretty much any class, of you squint.  I was originally thinking of him as a dwarf but looking at the sizes I am not so sure. The last figure is another Grenadier (not Mirliton honest) dwarf that got missed off the last round of painting so I guess this really is a bag of stuff I am catching up on. I'd still like some suitable dwarven thieves and maybe even some female dwarves.