Beware Of Geeks Bearing Bargains

To further ass to the queue I have purchased the BattleTech Clan Invasion box set. From a good friend, at a bargain price. I did this last night. So the set is now based alongside the last one of my unpainted mechs. Just the ugly ones.

The Clan Invasion was something I was never going to buy into. Oh well.

Life Mocks Me

At times, things can seem overpowering. There is a wall of stuff to do. My energy levels are through the floor. My daughter has left me with a pile of stuff to do on top of the pile of stuff I have to do. Then it's the seventy two hour TB cough making me rock so hard my ribs hurt. Just for giggles I get a dose of the runs that burn so hot that I think I have been living off vindaloos for a month. These seem to spring to life every time I have a coughing fit. Not quite every hour on the hour all night. Which is more often than I would like. So as I am laid up in bed with a bottle of water, a stock of immodium and my metaphorical running shoes on I contemplate my fate.

Coughing fit and short sprint later. So when life mocks you, mock the mockers.

On the plus side I need to stay near the toilet. The nearest place I can sit is the chair next to my painting bench so after my last dash that's where I am. My daughter should just be getting off the plane. I hope she is ok. I am not ready for painting but at least I can watch the TV.

I have made a little progress. The background for my Stargrave game had a Roman inspired culture. Imperial by nature, as you might expect, but very much in decline. They had created a servitor race, who fought in their armies and when they failed their masters, fought in their arenas. These were the gnollar. They were bred for combat. Genetically fast and strong with enough intelligence to be a good soldier. From childhood thy were taught the art of war and conditioned to respect the Imperial colours. I know that they are supposed to be some form of hyaena, but I am not sure that they are limited to that, and I am still thinking about skin/fur tones.

Part of me looks at them as tells me that they scream Traveller Vargr. Maybe not the sophisticated Imperium Vargr but maybe the Corsair kind. I have heard hints that Wargames Atlantic might be thinking about Traveller minis. The trouble with Traveller for me is I run games with minis and as far as I can make out there have been about half a dozen Vargr minis in 25mm. GW did some in 15mm. I have all of these. I know Martian Metals made some during the 1980s but we are talking unicorn poop. This is all better than the Hiver which as far as I can tell there is only one one.

The rest of the plan is looking at stuff for the week are from the Post Apocalypse range from Crusader Miniatures. Some nice characters that are a little wacky in places but many of them fit right in with my plans,

I am hoping I am going to the UK Games Expo in a couple of days. Fortunately I am not driving. I have taken the liberty of marking the toilets on the map and packing a bottle of water, some rehydration sachets and some Imodium already.😟

End Of The Week (32.5)

I started the week with a plan. It was a good one too. But no plan survives contact with children. So currently watching the little one running around a trampoline park. At least at the time I am writing this. I am claiming thirty and a half minis for the week. The half and some of the whole numbers being animals.

There was a twitchy sphincter moment when I didn't think I was going to get close to finishing what I started. I got some time after the little one went to sleep and more or less caught up/+. I am now nicely North of one hundred painted minis. So on balnce, I am happy and The New, New Cruelty fins the situation acceptable.

So there were a few bits that needed finishing from last week. The five armed civilians, which I think are Scotia, have been hanging around since last week so it was nice to get them done. There was also a female crossbow woman from  Northstar's Frostgrave range, that needed a few spots of paint. Other than the pigs, all the animals were started and finished this week, whilst the pigs just required a few details. Don't ask where they came from as they were a random purchase on the market. The darker animal between the bugs is a bit of a mystery. I was assuming this was a domesticated dog but it has some prominent brows which could be nascent horns, making it a goat. The treasure pile was given to me by a friend, in the late nineties. It had been sat in a bits box for some time after being purchased from a bargain bin so its probably a late eighties GW mini.

The main focus of the week was the guys in suits. These should work for any modern game and some sci-fi stuff. They are a mix of Future Wars and Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang from Copplestone.

As I have the laser cutter up and running, this has been used for a bit.  I might be playing Midgard: Heroic Battles so I thought I would get ahead with some bases, counters and measuring gauges. I have also finished the one hundred and thirty of so hex tiles for the next terrain hex project.

I have prepped a fair number of figures. Most of what I got in York is now bases on textured bases. I was planning on painting these but they are not primed. This should give me enough figures for an ulfhunder unit for  Midgard. What's above is about half of them.

Next week is all about the little guys.

How Not To Suffer From Hobby Inertia

As you can see in the picture there is a lot on my table. This demonstrates my current work in progress. There are a lot of separate projects. Somewhere deep in my brain there is some form of traditional idea that you should start a project, finish a project and then move on to the next one. It's some strange offshoot of the Protestant work ethic I thunk.

So this is my workflow. I like to have a few things going at the same time. If I paint a batch of ten minis I will usually opt to give myself some variety within the batch, a few sci-fi, some post apocalypse, a cowboy and top up the ten with some fantasy figures, as an example. Lots and lots of Copplestone magic. The variety keeps me interested and if It have ten random figures I can batch paint them with the same colours quickly and when I have done ten batches, none of the figures look the same.

Right now this is animal week. I have amassed a range of domesticated and wild animals and this is what is in the mix for the week. There are some that are already finished this week that didn't make it into the picture.

At the same time there are half a dozen or so near future/cyberpunk/sci-fi minis that I started last week. Tag onto the some Blood Bowl minis and this is the core of where I am at.

Over the years I have learned to love the dropper bottle. Most of my paint is in dropper bottles, even the G Dub stuff. Whilst so much better that the standard pots, every now and again I end up putting too much paint on the palette. Some part of me, sculpted by my parents and grandparents does not like waste. So if I end up finding an excuse to use it. So the number of projects expands. And expands. 

There are times when I get part way through what I have started and I get bored. Having painted a hundred Star Wars Legion minis I got bored. The BattleTech stuff has been there even longer. So rather than putting the work in progress stuff to a place that it out of site, and therefor out of mind, it stays on the bench. There are a few details (mainly) that need finishing and so when I find I have some spare paint, I can leap into action. That almost made me laugh.

I am certain that I will meet and exceed my target for the month this week,

End Of The Week (10)

So another end of the week. I feel like its been a good week despite time being limited. A little bit of car problems, migraines, lack of sleep and the tail end of the bad weather didn't help but I got where I needed to be. I had my ten figures done my Wednesday and then real life got in the way. Some progress was made but really this was about laying the ground for next week I finished another couple of Star Wars Legion figures so things seem to be doing okay. I am sick of the sight of Star Wars Legion stuff at the moment, so whilst I have no plans to take them off the bench they might be the background project of background projects. I should probably find the rest of the bits of the tauntaun riders. The New, New Cruelty and the Bingo seem to be helping me out.

I've worked a bit on one of my other goals for the year which is to finish a Blood Bowl Team. I have some more skaven somewhere and a star player. Until I find the rest of the rats, this is going to stay as the background project. Really need that rat ogre although looking at the price point maybe a proxy will do. Skitter Stab Stab and Hakflem Scuttlespike would also be nice.

My plan for next week mostly involves some post-apoaclyptic minis. They are mostly Crooked Dice with a few Crusader Miniatures thrown in. I needed a couple more so I added a couple more sci-fi bits from Scotia. I have also manged four posts in a week. I am very proud but I can feel another migraine coming so time to go. 

Life Vs. The Lifeless

So I woke with the urge to paint. I got a few things done and then sat down and started painting. Then I got hit by a massive migraine. My migraines are mostly a morning thing so I usually wait until they are done before I start anything. I thought I had gotten away with it. Still here we are. My ten minis for the week are not quite done but I am working on the detailing.

I get to have some family time on a Tuesday, or at least a close substitute so I am looking forward to that. 

The some Life Vs. The Lifeless by The Beautiful South earlier. "Optimism looks up and counts the stars, pessimism looks down and counts cracks" struck me hard. As did "That's what keeps you alive, the thought of undeserved death." I am struggling but feck it, you have to keep going. There is only forward, there is no going back.

End of the week (13)

Despite the best of intentions, I haven't got much done. This is in spite of the fact that the weather here is a bit kack. It's currently 2c which is the warmest it's been all week, and I am struggling to see the house on the other side of the street because of the fog. So I was going out but have decided against it. On the bright side I haven't run out of mince pies yet.

 

So staying in isn't much better. I have got a bit done but not as much as I would like. Having been full pelt for Star Wars Legion I am beginning to get tired of it. So I was thinking maybe it's time to turn the Legion stuff into the background project and start something else. That said I have finished thirteen figures this week. This isn't start to finish but they have been hanging around for a while.

I have added some tauntaun riders into the mix although I need to find a few bits to finish them off. I am quite happy for these to be the Background Project.

So for the change I have dipped into my primed and based queue. This is a long queue. So entering the foreground is a bit of a mix of modernish / sci-fi in 28mm. Some  of it is Stargrave, which for some reason is on my mind. There is some stuff from Scotia. I mainly brought these because I think Mark Copplestone created them. There is a solitary Crooked Dice post-apocalypse mini. Then there is one guy that I have no idea where he comes from. I will be sticking with contrast type paints in the main so confidence is high that I will manage to complete these, start-to-finish, this week.

At the New Year I promised to paint a Blood Bowl Team this year. So I found my Skaven team. Well some of it at least. As the Star Wars Legion stuff is the background project, these are even further back. I haven't even settled on colours for the kit. Still I can paint the flesh fur, boots and the like. I had kind of promised myself that I wouldn't add anything else to the bench until I had finished some more stuff. What can I say, I am a week person.

Anyway, this is my bingo score card for the week. I am happy with my results so far but I am beginning to think some of my choices are a little ambitious.

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.

More Thoughts On 3D Printing

So I have been doing a bit of work with my "brand new" toy. I have run about ten jobs through it now. My first attempt was an outstanding success. It was exactly what I was after. So I have tried a few more jobs.

The first thought I have is that it isn't easy. Of the ten or so jobs I have done so far about have have failed to print. I think I have worked out what the problem was. Yes, it was my fault. Will it get better? I will see. There is another job running as I type, so we will see.

So the remaining half have succeeded then? Errrrrmmmm. I think there have been a few cases where I have produced minutes I am completely happy with. Even then, lets just say there was nothing wrong with the print. The size isn't quite right. I haven't amended the size, they are just way to big. If a mini has no supports you can usually work out the height. The trouble is, those without supports depend on me putting supports in which is not so great,

Then there are prints that fail. On a tray full of minis, some or all of them might fail. There have been more abject failures than successes. I printed a couple of robots which came out alright. The trouble is that they are so flimsy, in order to keep them in scale, that they are just too fragile. They more or less disintegrated when I took the supports off. 

When all said and done there are only five figures that pass muster, One of them manages this because you can't see the bottom. Three look really good but are too tall. So out of ten ish print runs, there is only one figure that I am really happy with.

What next? Well I am going to keep going. I hope I am going to keep learning. 

ABC Warriors

So I have been doing some gaming with a new gaming group. Having a ball so far. Have played a wide range of games, most of which I haven't played before. I seem to be enjoying myself. For all my current luck, I seem to be doing okay with the dice. Maybe a little bit of tactics too.

This was a game of ABC Warriors. This is a game I liked the look of but was never going to buy. With two cards that gave us the hand of god, a sniper with a gun that seems to do the damage of a large artillery piece and a robot that is all but indestructible, the good guys won. With hardly a scratch.

3D Printing, Christmas And Other Things

In the first week of lockdown I brought a 3D resin printer. Over the years I had brought a few 3D printed bits and pieces and had generally found that, as least as far as FDM, they were a bit cheaper to buy but the quality wasn't all that. Most of the resin stuff I had brought off eBay just didn't turn up or was crushed. I could never get the thing to work. It seemed like such a waste of money that I gave up on the idea for a bit. A friend was given a resin orinteer. Decided he didn't want the fuss and went at got himself a bambu Labs printer. I have to say that this does nice work for an FDM printer. So he gave the resin printer, and a wash and cure station to me.

When I got the thing out of the box and it was exactly the same model as the one I already had.  When I had got that one I had spent days trying to get it to work and I gave it another go last year. With no joy. So I wrote it off as a dead duck and moved on. I had done all the research I could and it just didn't work.

Despite all of this I thought I would give it another go. It took some time but I eventually figured it out. The problem wasn't me it was the slicing software. Not just the random software I was using but the bespoke software for the machine. If I saved it different and used the oldest tiniest USB stick I could find, it worked. Then of course the wash and cure station didn't work but I quickly figured out what to do with that. I just need a new motherboard. 

So here am I, 3D printing. After four years of trying. It's mostly Star Wars Legion stuff. That seems to be more current focus. 

Then of course Christmas got in the way. There is a lot to do. Not least of which is the naughty elf. So I just get on with that. Around all the arsing about with the 3D printer. It's a process.

Having figured out that my XBOX was working and that it was my long covid riddled brain was at fault, I started on Dead Rising 4. Having played it through a lot and at about 95% of the achievements done, I used to be able to play the game on the hardest level. My brain isn't up to that anymore and I can't focus for long but I am making the most of it.

All this means I haven't been doing much painting. The Star Wars Legion stuff is still on the table as is the Battletech. There is a game coming up so I guess I should be finishing the mechs. My painting bench is the the bedroom which is where the 3D printer. So I have taken the decision to sleep on the sofa. This is not a long term solution so I will have to come up with some sort of solution. 

So here I am. Things are going as well as expected.

Not Quite Black Friday

Christmas comes but once a year. Which might be too often. For me the season starts with Black Friday. Not because I start my shopping but because of Dead Rising 4. I do like my zombies.

It now includes the first movie of the season. I do like a good holiday movie. Thanks to the king of the comedy zombie movie Bruce Campbell for staring in Black Friday. A movie so good they renamed it Black Friday! It's all in the exclamation point. I know it's not today, but I think I am happy with the season commencing a few days early. I mean it snowed last week. It's totally fine.

So it is back to the bench. I am thinking I have some zombies in the queue. I need to finish my Star Wars Legion stuff. This is getting pretty close. For the most part I am down to the detailing and sorting the bases out. 

This should be done by the weekend. Then I have no idea what happens next. I have plenty of choice.

More Tiny Steps

Long COVID is a barrel of laughs. I think I am having a good day then LC says forget that and pay attention to me. I did get some stuff done and then the wall said hello again. Suddenly I don't have the energy to change the channel on the TV. It can't be a bad day because I now have the energy to be upright. Two posts in two days says something else.

So I managed to prime about twenty minis including three Battletech mechs and some stuff for Sludge. I was planning on carving some raised terrain for Battletech and got one piece carved out of the twenty or so I had planned. On top of this I managed to put some things in the right place so I can finish some more hexes. Not for Battletech. 

Now I am hoping for some more energy tomorrow. Past experience says that is probably not going to happen. What I will get s another wall and a lot of brain fog. Still that will be better than the last few months.

Progressing With BattleTech

Having picked up the brush for the first time in a year, I am making some progress. I just can't focus for long periods of time anymore. So I will take what I can get. I wanted to keep up the tempo with the BattleTech stuff.

I have acquired another two mechs. These were classed as painted. Lots of grey in the nooks and crannies but it's a start.

They are still a little way off being finished. I am working on some transfers but need some clear gloss acrylic varnish before I can do that.

Whilst not the best work I have ever done, let's say I am out of practice, they look better than a lot of what I am seeing online. 

Still it has given me the urge to start posting again. I doubt I will get back to a post per day, but a post a month would make me feel a bit more in the game again. I have a load of Sludge stuff to do. Not to forget the Grey Legion.

Unexpected Projects

I now have an almost pathological avoidance of games my friends want to play. Over time I have been drawn into many expensive projects that have been shelved before my first purchase has arrived. Many of those that don't fail for a variety of reasons like suddenly moving away or making a decision to buy every Napoleonic army in 6mm.

Still at the blobby stage

So a couple of my mates are playing Battletech. I've played it in the past. Almost forty years in the past. I had been thinking about it in much the same way. I have to admit I was wrong. They actually like the game and want to keep playing. As a birthday present I got a couple of box sets and some random extra mechs.

Suddenly I am back to painting. For the first time in months. Trying a few different things. Not least is a leaning more towards contrast types of paint. Then I've taken moulds of some mech bits and used greenstuff to make base scatter. 

I have some of my mojo back. My painting area is now back up and running properly after almost a year. I've even got a proper wet pallet as I couldn't find my home made one.

Once I've done the mechs, I think I have twenty four of them, I am going to move onto Sludge, and finish of the stuff that has been waiting for final touches for a year. 

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 upgrade 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.

The Big Lock In

I have been off work for a few days now. I've not got "it" I don't think but I have a cough that wakes the kids up. Not that I am getting to see them as I am currently in "splendid isolation". Still the bench is in good shape and I don't handle boredom well....so....

These have already been strange days for me. I went from working from home for eight years back to the real world of work. Mainly because I was about to become a dad, which I now am. This hasn't allowed as much me time. Until now.

At one point last year I really was getting back into painting and then the job and then the baby came along. No such excuse but good problems to have. In fact, as I am not allowed to go anywhere I have no excuses.

So back to the paint table. There are some figures to paint but I am currently feeling the terrain side of things, with maybe a little bit of figure painting on the side. So I have some post apocalypse stuff in mind.  For years now I have wanted to do some junk fences and, since around 2015, I have really been looking for the bits. Just about have enough now but still feeling the urge to over supply myself. There are a few bits that might make it useful for other things like modern or even sci-fi but they were really aimed to have the end of the world look. There is some junk piles. Always good for dressing up the battlefield. When I was having a tidy up I found some aquarium plants that I got to make trees for 6mm sci-fi in the mid nineties. They are getting incorporated into the junk, the fences and some areas of scrub. Last summer I started working on some mesa type terrain. I hope to get them finished off too. There are some scrap cars (some all out war and some really cheap stuff my mum got me before she died, imagine, still having toys brought for you in your fifties) that need that post apocalypse vibe finishing off. I have been planning a post apocalypse game set in London for a few years now and wanted to do something for that too. I have some ideas for scrap vehicles and thought I might do a scrap tank and a ruined scrap tank too. There are also some toy vehicles that I would like to make a bit more table top friendly. There is also some quasi industrial stuff to do. This is all scratched built but I am aiming for the higher end of scratch built so very little in the way of soup cans and bottle tops. The plan is a real deep  dive into the bits box I have been sat on for thirty years topped off with all the bit I have been acquiring over the last few years.

A long time ago (twenty plus years ago) I wanted to do something a bit more in keeping with more modern 28mm terrain alongside a version of the building that has been post apoclyfied (it is a word, I made it up). If time and the current pre-apocalypse allow, I might get here too.

I am also liking the sci-fi vibe at the moment with X-Com leading the way. I can see some terrain and maybe even some figures being done for that. Some of what I am doing and planning will work across a number of genres. I have been playing X-Com 2 which covers sci-fi and even post apocalypse which works out fine for me. Some of it should also work with the concepts I have for a mecha game.

There are some All Out War minis to finish off which I guess are also post apocalyptic. I was in the very early stages of doing a doom lords Blood Bowl team and there is also a Nurgle team which is just about ready to go. There are a whole load of random stuff on the bench to. There is stuff from twenty years ago from the future wars range by Foundry and some wild west stuff, which may also be foundry or Northstar. On a number of occasions I think I have said that I have finished off all the dark ages stuff. I just found some more so they are going to go into the queue to.

My main interest this year has been the Star Wars Legion game. At some point I would like to give it a go but my main interest was in using them for roleplaying as the only game I am in (was in/on hiatus). I ordered some more yesterday and I have a pile on the table.

There is a lot of stuff going on in the big wide world. Not sure what to do about it in this forum as there is plenty of good information out there. That said Now that I have a reason to pass stuff on to the next generation, maybe I will chose to post some stuff here.

End Of The Week - Better than expected (37)

It's not been such a bad week for figure painting. Most of what I have been working on for the last three weeks is now done and somenew stuff has made it through to completion. I am not feeling finishing the last two figues off for some reason but I am sure I will get round to them soon enough. I did start the Lizardmen skinks and have finished the first twelve and I have started the next dozen which are well on the way to being finished.

Skinks. There are rather a lot of them and more yet to do. These are a nice easy paint job as they are mostly low-detail plastic. There will be more next week and probably the week after that too. I now really hate turquoise.

This guy is the Frostgrave Snow Troll. He looks better here than he does in real life. I can see a few gaming uses for him so he seemed like a worthwhile project.

These are all Wargames Foundry  Street Violence figures. I got a job lot of eBay more than ten years ago when I was foing a lot of moden role playing. This is a nice range of figures and relatively easy to paint.

More Street Violence figues from the Foundry. These come from a coupleof different sets but as they are all dressed in green this seemed like the place to put them. Thre is no real purpose other than I was tired of them sitting there.

Artizan designs is where I got these cowboys from. Thy have just been sat around fo a while, the best part of five years I guess. When I first started painting 28mm figues for the blog I think it was some moe of the figues I got with these. How times fly.

This is really a mixed bag. On the far left is a Frostgrave vampire. I don't mcuh like this figure and I struggled to get him to look right. Second left is a Reaper gladiator whcih I got about fifteen years ago making it the oldest of todays crop. I am not sure about the crazy lady on the inner right but I think she came fom Black Tree Designs. On the outer left is the latest of what I have been calling the last of the Viking project. This figure came from Gripping Beast about five years ago when I first started the project off.

There is supposed to be another pictue here but it seems to be having problems loading it up. It's another four Street Violence figures. Some are meant to be members of the A-Team from the eighties which I guess dates the range or at least the designer. he others are just some random figues I got in the bulk buy.

I guess all of the Foundry stuff was set to do double duty for modern and post-apocalypse stuff. On the whole I like thema lot and they fit well with my Copplestone stuff. Definately more at the heroic end of the market.

Generally I would call this a good week but it has been a grind. The New, New Cruelty is happy enough. In genreal I have been just about okay with what I have achieved this year. I am glad I have almost finished most of what I have set out to do and I am now almost back on track again if not still slightly ahead. Given that I usually class figures like the skinks as half a figure I am still behind (should be closer to 31 and not 37).

End Of The Week - Too Tired To Stand Up (25)

I have managed to make most of my goals this week and exceeded a few of them. So all in all I am quite happy with myself. This was going to be a simple week. I was expecting to be busy. I was. Tired now and ready for bed and it is not yet 9pm.

The week began with a plan to paint ten figures. At some point I added one on the quiet because I thought it was going to be easy. Most of what I planned to paint this week was from the Star Saga game by Mantic. From the first time I saw it I liked the idea of buying it. It was the right price, there were plenty of figures and a decent amount of usable terrain. There were many sci-fi games they would work for. I had some ideas for the X-Com game that has been on the gaming burner of a low heat for about two decades. Mostly at the time I thought they would be good for what I had planned for Titansgrave: The Ashes Of Valcana, a game I really like the idea of but doubt I would get too many players.

Anyway the first set of figures I decided to paint were the security guards. I played about with the fleshtones a bit and I think they came out ok. This is despite the detail on the faces being a little soft as they are plastic figures. In the end I was okay with them. Not my best work but acceptable for tabletop standard.

Then there were a couple of hero figures. Most of the heroes don't seem to work with many of my ideas but I think I will come round to doing them eventually.These models were, to my mind at least, nice to paint although the face on the female warrior could have used a but more details.

In my head there were three more dark age figures to do and I thought I planned to paint the three. I could only find the two though. I doubt the horn playing musician will get used a lot so I didn't put a huge amount of work into it. Some work went into both but not a huge amount. They came out alright though.

Another one of the big plans at one point was to run a superhero game. Whilst there is plenty of Heroclix stuff out there but the models, to be fair, a bit kack. Really what I wanted was to go for nice metal figures at around the right price. At about £5 this model from Reaper was not the cheapest figure I have ever brought. It did work out okay though and I am very happy with it.

By Wednesday, with eleven figures painted, it was all pretty much done. There was a few bits of detailing to do but not enough to keep me busy. So I had a rummage. Having enjoyed painting the guards I thought I would have a go at some of the others. So much for an easy week.

During the process of rummaging I some military types from Star Saga to do. These were an easy enough paint job. There were some mould lines that were hard to get out and so I ended up leaving them.  A simple paint job with mainly shades of green (I think five in total) and that was most of them done. These are pretty good for hard sci-fi and I can already see a number of uses for them.

Somehow I didn't stop there. What do you call these figures? Well I have no idea. Some sort of failed (or possibly successful) experiment. These are big hulking figures (with the faces looking not entirely unlike the big green wrecking machine).

 
So in the end there wa a total of twenty five figures done and dusted. This sounds like a lot but there majority are plastic figures with limited details so relatively easy to complete. Along the way I worked on some more terrain. For a while I have been wanting some standing stones. These are not yet finished. On top of that I have done a little bit of work on five of the fifteen figures I have planned for next week.