Not another 2023 post?

 Yep it’s true. Along with just about everyone else in the hobby blogosphere I’m about to lay out my plans for the coming year and bore you with a short recap on the previous one! If it makes you feel any better, logging this stuff helps with motivation in general which in turn should encourage more hobby output which then means I post more often and show off what I’ve been working on, which will hopefully encourage you readers to work on your own projects and then post about said work and then encourage me to do likewise! Rinse and repeat. 

2022 for my hobby went by like a loud wet fart into clean underwear. So much potential to be proud of but sadly leaving a lackluster result. A few things were done for sure, but not nearly what I’d hoped to achieve over a 365 day period. A lot of that had to do with my private life getting stupid-busier and my space to actually attempt hobby work disappearing almost altogether. Things in these regards are soon to change a little so I’m hoping to be able to both work on projects and post about that work more so this year.

Now I’m not promising weekly postings, but I will pledge to at least posting monthly. Minimum. And I have a large new project that I should finish up this year which I am rather excited about. 

My wife generously allowed me to purchase my own Xmas gift “from her” and thus started my new 28mm WW2 army for Bolt Action:1940 Greeks! Seeing as my late war Germans and Soviet’s were at a point I can call fully painted, I felt I wanted to work on a new force from the early years of the war. I had been drooling over some gorgeous sculpts on Facebook by a designer and producer out of Athens, Greece called Studio Historia, who prior to Xmas stuck up a sweet army deal on their Ebay store. Three weeks later and a shockingly small parcel arrived from the Mediterranean nation with some simply lovely 3D-printed minis inside. I have supplemented these with some Great Escape Games metal minis and a couple Etsy purchases for 3D printed tanks and transports. 

So expect lots of green uniformed fellows with impressive moustaches in the near future along with captured Italian vehicles. To break up the monotony I also plan to paint up a handful of Dark Ages Saxons and Vikings too (I recently picked up Lion Rampant 2) and more random anthropomorphic minis for Burrows and Badgers.

So there’re the plans for the year and I hope to stick to them. I even hope to get in a few games too (only got to play one face to face game in 2022). As always your comments and encouragement help with the motivation to see the above happen and I thank you for that. 

So until next post where I hope to have a final squad of Canadians done for my Dieppe Landing force - the final piece to finish up for that project prior to starting the Greeks. Belated Xmas and New Year best wishes! 

Cheers (and apologies for the lack of pics. Promise next post will make up for that), 

- Dai

The Chaos Genestealer Cult Was Always a Thing (Part 4 - A New Year & more WIP's)

There’s a lot that’s been happening my end that explains my lack of posting these past months.

My lady and I got married, we also moved to a larger apartment and then add in all the traditional Holiday fun that comes with attending my wife’s family gatherings. No complaints from me on this though, I’ve thoroughly enjoyed being welcomed into her family and returning those sentiments as best as I can.

On the hobby side of things, a New Year is here once more and I’ve at least not been completely idle, O no.

I’ve been slowly assembling some of the model kits I have sat on my hobby shelves in preparation for the projects I intend to get done this year.

 A Kellmorph for my Chaos Genestealer Cult from my Kill Team box. "Chaos" cos he has horns alright? Actually, I really liked the stock sculpt as is, but realised he would look like anyone else's and he also needed something "Chaos" about him, so yeah - horns. I like them, though there'll be some cursing as he tries to get through the lower doorjams.

Next, a Games Workshop Leman Russ tank that was a birthday gift last October from a very good friend. The kit doesn’t seem to have changed that much since the Leman Russ was first released (I got one on release day even) and went together pretty well. In lieu of the wholly uninspiring commander mini that is supplied on the sprue, I instead stuck in an old re-casted Forge World Imperial Guard tank commander that I’d had in my bits box for around the last 10 years. I’ve also added Genestealer Cult badges on it’s hulls and a Chaos back-banner cut down to show it’s leanings toward the Chaos god Khorne.

After that, I got inspired by the preview picture of a future supplement for Bolt Action, D-Day (Brit/Canadians) and began putting together a Warlord Games Churchill tank that I built as a Mark VI. The kit was not at all simple to assemble like the Leman Russ as the instructions were bloody vague. After a few evenings of cursing and fingers glued together, I finally ended up with this beast. Not a bad finished result and like the Leman Russ above, I used an alternate metal tank commander (Produced by CompanyB) as the one on the sprue was awful.

Somehow the rear didn't sit flush against the lower chassis, so I had to get creative and cut down sprue pieces to fill the gap. It'll do for me.

Lastly and assembly completed just last night, is this full section of Commonwealth infantry by Warlord Games for my Dieppe Landing project. These lot were a flippin pig to assemble and I had no fun at all during the process. Why on earth the designers thought that making all of the water canteens, pouches and so forth separate was a good idea, or that separate arms and weapons was “fun”, I have no idea… I’m not even sure I’ll make the remaining 15 in the box the process was so painful. Any future additions to my commonwealth will be metals for sure, though once done this ten-man squad at least looks half decent.

And that's it for the now. New place doesn't have a spot to spray paint at and I'm not sure I could get away with trying to do so on my balcony, but I'm going to see if I can't sneak in a late night effort. In the meantime, I'll be assembling more things to empty my shelves a little more and try to get posts up at least once a month as that's not really asking too much now, is it???

New Year's Eve 2014

Today would have been my Grandfather's 89th birthday.

Tomorrow will be my Grandmother's 89th birthday. 

For those who are paying attention, yes, you're correct, my Grandparents (On my Mother's side) were born a day apart - 31st December and 1st of January of 1926. It's astounding they ever met at all considering My Grandfather was born in the Rhondda Valley, Wales and my Grandmother in Southern Greece. But to both meet AND fall in love during the horrors of World War II is (in my mind) near miraculous. Once Greece had been finally liberated from the Germans and Italians, my Grandfather (At that time still an RAF Armourer) returned to court and then marry the beautiful Greek girl he had chanced to meet the first time the British Commonwealth forces attempted to wrest control of Greece from the Axis forces.

There's far more to the story, but I'll leave it there. My Grandfather was the man I admired most in my life and I felt it was fitting to honour his birthday here. 

Now to some Hobby stuff!

Only a little work going on. For the upcoming tournament next month (24th) I have started to paint my 3rd infantry platoon for my Flames of War British. These are handy as they can be used both in Mid and Late War. So far though, I've only gotten paint on their helmets and faces, so not worth posting a picture as yet.

I also managed to get some painting on the Robotech Veritech Jet forms. Stupidly didn't make sure the pics of one came out before I left for work though, so only the one that represents my character in the game. Guardian and Robot forms to come!

Unconventional scheme for the setting according to my American fellow players, but my character is Mars-based, so I felt his mech would have a paint scheme that would set him aside from the rest of the squadron.

I also stuck my ACW Confederate cavalry on sticks, ready for paint. They are currently in the garage with grey primer drying.

Enough here for 3 generals, an 8-stand cavalry regiment and their dismounted version. I'm just missing the dismounted standard bearer fig that I think I'll have to create myself from a random infantry fig.

I hope you all have pleasant and safe New Year's celebrations tonight (Or already have if it's New Year already where you are.)!

Happy New Year!

Goddamnedsunnuvabitchstolemypants!

I'll preface this post with this - I'm writing this because I'm at home, alone and too bored to paint and that I really had resolved not to post about resolutions and new years and plans and so forth. Sad eh? It's funny what an empty house and a long dose of reading blogs about all your own resolutions and so forth will do to an idle hobbyist.

(If you can place the quote in the post title I'll give you ten shiny internet drachmas too.)

Last year was pretty much dominated (For those only just following this blog) by my British Flames of War escapades. As the last post showed, I managed to paint up a fair amount of stuff and can run multiple army types which is more than I've ever done for any games system. Truth be told though, I'm getting a little burnt out painting all that green armour and those pooey brown uniforms, so I think it's time for a change of gear.

As mentioned I really have been working on my commissions. Commission. Singular, for now. The Dark Vengeance Librarian is a soulless design and really has failed to get me excited about it to actually want to paint the thing. Just seems like the designers at GW just went and stuck random iconography all over the place to fill empty flat surfaces and the obvious dull Space marine-type dangly devotionals here and there. So far he looks like this:

I like the red cloth around his torso - looks like a cowboy bandana!

Customer wanted it for his Heresy Era Dark Angels, which means proper-job black armour with red chapter badge. Am hoping I can get him finished by the end of next week as the same customer is also waiting for me to paint up a squad of 7 of the current Ratling sculpts too.

To break up the painting of the above, I also laid down the majority of the base colours on a fig for a mate's DnD character. Think it's some sort of Reaper fig? I switched out it's pole weapon for an axe head too as that's what the bloke wields in-game.

Very Brotherhood of the Wolf.

On to things I plan for this shiny new 2014.....

1. First off, Relic Knights. The Kickstarter stuff is now being manufactured and I'm hoping they'll be able to get shipments out before silly Chinese New Year closes down a country of 2 billion people..... (!?!) I'll have a crud-load of stuff to paint and as we get closer to delivery, I am getting more and more excited to paint it up. Will be a nice, colourful change from the WW2 uniformity! My aim is to have at least a basic points level worth of stuff painted before year's end.

2. Next up is my poor neglected 28mm sci-fi home-brewed project. I've already started writing up a little fluff for this and will hopefully have something posted up in the next week or two to get some feedback. I've plenty of Dreamforge Eisenkern (21) troopers to paint for this and some cool Reaper Bones generic sci-fi-trooper-type-figs that should look good squaring off against eachother. I've even (last night) stuck together a piece of mdf terrain for the project too. I've a tonne of foamcore boards to cut out next to make into trashed city buildings too. I plan to have the pieces for this project done, all of them well before year's end. The scenery can also be used for Relic Knights, so double the reason to get them done.

3. Painting the above tricorn'd fellow got me to realising that I still have a silly amount of fantasy (Very old and newer sculpts) figures that really have sat unloved for too long. They'd seriously make our Friday evening roleplay sessions far more fun and be a nice change of pace should the other projects start becoming a chore. From 1980's DnD sculpts (pig-faced-orcs!) to more recent cool looking Reaper stuff, I have plenty of different characters to choose for whatever hobby mood takes me. No real promise on this one.... maybe 10 of them painted up this year, maybe more?

4. My poor Imperial Guard.... They have sat unloved for over a year. My aim is to get at least two more squads and a command squad painted up AND finish those Chimera stand-ins too.

5. Should my current mound of Flames of War Canadians ever prove to be tiresome, I still have plenty left to paint and I still need a dedicated MidWar army too. My original plan was to start a Romanian army. Cool eh? But expensive, so that's been shelved indefinitely. Instead I'm sticking to my old plan of being able to field a British Motor Coy - supposedly crap in the minds of dedicated players, but it's an army I already have 80% of the figures for and that by itself is a big decider. I also have that whole British Guards Cromwell/Challenger Company to paint up, so REALLY do not need to be buying any more 15mm soldiers. For this I hope to have at least one of the Company types painted up by the end of the year.

6. That Chaos Fantasy warband project. Yeah.... about that. I'm determined to finish the damned thing. The end.

7. A simple one, well the idea is simple, but the execution is going to be trickier - start using the Airbrush and compressor my wife so lovingly bought me over a year ago!!!

8. This one probably should have been number 7 eh? My nurgle stuff, needs selling. That's right. Well, the Nurgle space marines - just not into them anymore. The daemons though - they are going to get painted, damnit!

9. Lastly - my poor poor Inquisimunda.... So much potential, yet my gaming group were crap and didn't want to play. Still, those fun conversions and interesting miniatures are still sat there, wondering why they couldn't at least stand there in their full regalia as apposed to their current primed states? So for my final pledge, I aim to get at least two of the teams done, also by the end of the year. 

So there you have it, lots to get on with and hopefully more interesting for blog posting for the general blog readership than this past year of almost all Flames of War blog posts! If you managed to read to the bottom, then I applaud your tenacity. Thank you.

State of the Commonwealth

This'll be my last post before 2014 comes and the end is finally beyond nigh, or some other nonsense.

It also herald's my son's 9th birthday..... which is sobering.

Hobby-wise, I've actually been working on one of my commissions, albeit slowly, but at least I've kept my pledge. I'm hoping to have the (Dark Vengeance boxed set librarian.) figure done before the 2nd week in January.

Merry Xmas, we've just invaded, I mean - liberated your country!

My Flames of War experience has been fun It's been about 13 months since I first started down this 15mm WW2 path. I've attended 4-times as many tournaments during this year as I'd gone to in my life prior. I've painted enough miniatures to be able to field not one, but two fully painted armies. I was lucky enough to be shown how to play the game by a more than able instructor (Who has since buggered off to North Carolina - Riha you git! :P) and introduced a close mate to the game and convince him to start up his own collection too.

Soon enough I'll be getting my Relic Knights Kickstarter stuff and so will be perhaps painting some different stuff early next year (I went for the rather lovely looking racers of the Cersi Speed Circuit.), though I do still have plenty of Brits to paint for Flames of War still. I also plan to paint up some 28mm sci-fi figs to start on my home-brewed setting project which I'll be playing using the cool 5150-Star Army ruleset by 2-Hour-Wargames.

With that, I offer up a state of the Dai's Canadian 4th Division run of pics, my first time showing them all together. I'm quite proud to be honest.

A "whats what" for you

Them on the left.

Them on the Center

Armour on the right - can kind of see the mud effects on the tanks here too.

And lastly these chaps, who aren't from my Canadians, but instead British Guards Armoured Recce. They'll soon be joined by some lovely Cromwells, Challengers and some other cheeky leftovers.

Thanks all who come here to read my witterings and view my hobby work. I appreciate each and every one of your comments and critiques. Your patronage does me honour. Merry Xmas to each and every one of you and the happiest of New Years too.

I'm off to watch Kick Ass2....

- Dai