Heap of Abandonment

     After Monster May(hem) I still had a few more giant spiders on the hobby desk, I added 2 more large spiders and 3 more of the smaller ones to my swarm. With that, I ran out of 50mm bases for the large spiders and called it a day.

Experimenting with colours

The whole swarm

    

    Spiders painted up for Rangers of Shadowdeep, which requires 6 plus. Extra spiders! I am sure some arachnophobic reader out there is cringing at the thought. And the box has 24, so only 13 more to go my multi-limbed opposed readers!

    Occasionally, a project will speak to you, painting and colour scheme comes naturally. Every model should speak to you in someway or at least did when you picked up the new shiny. You enter a zen like meditation while painting these figures, hours go by without notice. But, as Ian Malcolm says, life finds a way. In this case, it's to get in my way of my precious hobby! We moved in November so these Blackstone Fortress models just pushed off the desk into The Heap. We don't usually talk about The Heap on the blog, those miniatures that are just inches away from being whole painted models. Now is the time we do, if I don't have a theme for the month, I will chip away at these island of misfit toys. Maybe while listening to The Misfits (are they good? I don't actually listen to them.)

    

    Anyways! Cultists from Blackstone Fortress are done. I picked up the Escalation expansion for Blacktone Fortress at the beginning of the covid shut down to support the local hobby store. Two explorers are already done. The rest are on the painting block in various stages of progression.

    I have a second cultist flamer that I picked up in an ebay lot a few months ago, very well sculpted, good thing I have two!

Next on the Hobby Desk!

    From July to August is the Community Challenge, Season of Scenery, that Dave hosts every year. Seeing as I have used the same tree and 3D printed house for the backgrounds of my pictures a few times on the blog, it might be time to get more terrain painted up! 

A Project that Clix

     While on my parental leave I had sometime thinking about the Heroclix, of all things, that I have and what their fate should be. My first thought - besides actually PLAYING heroclix, was to re-base select models to use in Heroscape, something that might one day be of interest to Rosalind? Or anyone else just starting to learn their first tabletop wargame. A quick google search took me to a large database of fan made Heroscape cards for playing super heroes in the game.

     This project I was pretty excited about while away from all my miniatures. Pondering up which villains and super hero squad I would like to paint up for the game. The Sinister Six against Spider-man that has called in the X-men for backup? A rampaging Red Hulk needs to be contained before he destroys have of Manhattan? Could try out just about anything.

    After a bit of jumping in and out of rabbit holes, I stumbled upon Angry Piper's blog. He has a bunch of battle reports, repaints of heroclix, forgotten heroes challenges - sculpting miniatures for lesser know characters in comics. Between Angry Piper and  Carrion Crows Buffet they also use a bunch of good looking Pulp Figures, probably will pick some up eventually. After reading a couple scenarios, it prompted me to pick up Super Mission Force 2nd which he uses for the battle reports. This systems seems like a lot of fun and had lots of creative options for fleshing out any super person you could think of, whether that be an existing trademarked character owned by The Mouse, or fan made. 

    The other side effect of looking through my heroclix, is that I have started borrowing comics from the library, Green Lantern and X-men mostly. For the most part, Yellow (use fear to control) and Green (harness willpower) Lanterns are arch enemies as they are basically polar opposites, but there was a great arc which Guy Gardener, your typical 50's beat cop who plays by his own rules, fights the biggest Yellow Lantern Arkillo without power rings, toppling the top dog to make the others in the corps to fall in line. Majority of what I repainted was heroclix, hope to branch out more... just need to prioritize my collection.

Top: Artocitus - leader of the Red Lanterns, Red Hulk, Arkillo - Second in command of the Yellow Lanterns, Kilowag - Instructor for new Green Lantern recruits 

Bottom: Saint Walker and Guy Gardener - One of four earth lanterns

    Later Green Lantern comics introduced the spectrum of colours each lantern using a specific emotion to create their constructs. Red - Rage, Orange - Greed, Green - Will, Blue - Hope, Yellow - Fear, Purple - Love, and Black - Death, which isn't an emotion but is metal AF!

Some of the other clix I was thinking about rebasing/painting. Still figuring out base sizes for models. With so many clix losing their base, their dials will make great damage dials. I should be busy throughout the winter now. Definitely don't need to BUY anything else.

    Throughout Covid the Regina Central library has been offering free 3D printing, I printed off some smaller things a few months ago. While in Fort Saskatchewan, I might've went a bit overboard with my submissions.... and well, they started charging for the service when they were finished. Shows me not to abuse the system! On the plus side, I got some really good dungeon crawling tiles and graves for some spooky ghosts that might hit the desk in October!

Caverns for In-Person D&D someday...

Close up for detail

    Some more detailed items turn into garbage with the filament printer that the library uses. This sarcophagus turned out well, the corpse has seen better days though! Expect to see these tombs on the Sorrowmourn Choir, Spooktober is coming!

    Previously, I had printed out some more traditional dungeon tiles with which I painted in grays. I wanted these caverns to glow a bit magically, hoping to add some vegetation to the walls, and some mushrooms, probably made with green stuff. 

Shadespire LOS blocking terrain featuring a friendly Gallanghann

    The rest is kind of a hodgepodge of what I have painted up, Orson Krennic had been mostly painted and in pieces on my desk for sometime now, his segmented body laughing at my lack of faith in the Dark Side no longer! The dwarves have been finished for a bit and the Blackstone Fortress Heroes I was hoping to finish off the Cultists with them but they still need more work. 

Krennic with his bodyguard dwarves.

    I was a bit lazy and didn't feel like getting out the BSF tiles for a photo shoot, so Gotfret and Servitor X-101 are hanging out on a Heroclix mat.

    The last thing to mention is a project that I hope to finish for October - which would be Shadows of Brimstone! This dungeon crawler is set in the wild west, where dark stone has been discovered in the near by mines outside of Brimstone. It has been found that these stones have a magic to them. Sadly, this power comes with a price, an explosion rips open a rift between worlds. Now unspeakable demons are flooding out of the mines, it's up to the heroes to close the portals to other worlds. Why not loot some of the precious stones at the same time as well?

Six Tentacles finished.

   We also played Root in our garage at the start of the month, why our garage? Because it seems that our cute furry cats are deadly to my eldest brother, Shawn. 

Here you have the typical "still on speaking terms" picture before the game.

    This was a learning game for both Shawn and Nathan. Shawn played the Marquise de cat and Nathan, the Eyrie dynasty. According to the game, they are the least complex. I would disagree in some way, as the other two factions aren't that hard to handle. 

    

    Eyrie have decrees which dictate what you must do on your turn, otherwise your leader disgraced and you lose victory points. Clearings are broken up into different animals, fox, rabbit, mouse or bird (wild card). One card must be added to the decree each turn, or more if you are insane. Bird cards do help, but they also cost you victory points for each used in the decree. As more turns go on, you have more and more potential that you can't build in a fox clearing as you might have already done that three turns in a row and there aren't any to claim or you can't battle in a certain clearing as the enemies were picked off by that blasted Vagabond's crossbow! Eyrie is simple to understand, but you definitely need to plan your next turn. We did help Nathan out as it was his first game, but this is a tough game to do a tutorial game as one faction can really take off if you aren't watching - like every time Rachel is playing the Woodland Alliance. First games you shouldn't be watching the points anyways right? It's about picking off those industrial cats with a well placed crossbow bolt from the Vagabond.

Next on the Hobby Desk!

    I am getting close to finishing my painting of the core models in Shadows of Brimstone, contrast paints help speed up the process, but it doesn't help when I find more models at Dragon's Den to buy!? Oh well, will most likely get in a solo play soon.

    

What's this? There's colour everywhere!?

    My painting habits have gone WiLdlY out of control! I started out painting some Rising Sun, Koi Clan Bushi. Finishing most of the ones I was working on, I moved on to making some animals for PrimeEVO. Then switched to Warhammer terrain as I was cleaning out my hobby hole, and back and forth. What!? Dwarves? WHO INVITED DWARVES!? 

    This was also over a month or so, with baby, work and a good smattering of video games to distract me. Heck it took me like a week to actually take pictures of the stuff I finished, wearing a baby while shooting photos near the natural light, does not good bedfellows make. So without further a due, here is my showcase of mostly random stuff I have been tossing paint on.

    These Sector Fronteris Environment terrain were from the Theta-7 Acquisitus Kill Team box. They popped onto the paint table after I cleaned up my hobby desk, noticing how little work that needed to be done to them to get them onto the table. The Tech-priest has been completed for my Crusade last year, the 3 ruststalkers are primed, don't think the Infiltrators are off their sprue yet. Eventually, I'll get around to making a Kill Team out of them. No plans to make full units for 40k, so might just do two Infiltrators.

Front

Back

    Besides Slaanesh models this year, Blackstone Fortress figures are hitting the table. In heavy doses of FOMO and wanting to support Comic Readers at the start of the pandemic. I picked up Escalation, then Ascension, and The Dreaded Ambull (the latter being from Dragon's Den as it was sold out in Regina) throughout the lock down.

    Escalation will be prioritized first, being filled with sweet miniatures and required for Ascension. The Ambull was painted with contrast paints, for a quick paint job. 

    All the Escalation kit has been assembled, the Crusader being the first to be painted.

    Besides battling rival tribes in PrimEVO, the primatives will take on deadly prehistoric beasts for the betterment of their tribe, using their bones, meat and fur for survival in the wild.

Prehistoric Deer

    I went the cheap way with these figures, buying them from toy stores instead of an actual hobby store. Scale might be a bit off for some but whatcha going to do? Could be fully grown or infant age.

Generally in PrimEvo, before setting up, players would determine a size of a herd of deer, mammoths, etc. I felt that I could still do this, but add some variety of what herbivores were around, instead of just all deer. Prehistoric mammals would all be mostly around the same watering hole. 

Ground Sloths were all made in China.

    I decided a Macrauchenia would be the closest looking mammal for the "elephant", which in fact is actually thought to be a relative to a llama. Guess I should have checked what it might be before painting it like an elephant. 

A couple more deadly hunts.

    And what's a prehistoric skirmish game without some deadly creatures to maim your tribes? The woolly mammoth, is definitely a youth, I'll need to find a much older (and larger) parental unit. 

    A few more prehistoric mammals, and dinosaurs are on the workbench. Would be nice to get several more painted up to really fill out the table. The Zulu tribesman from frostgrave might work for a rival tribe, might as well get paint on them too! 

    While putting off this blog update, seriously, like a month since I had opened this post!? , I have painted up a few more models, a Lord of Pain is now ready to take to the battlefield.

sorry about the quick pics.

    I did paint a couple dwarves for Song of Blades and Heroes but I'll post them once I get the warband finished off. Why do fantasy vikings, when you can do sci-fi vikins? While procrastinating on dwarves, my accidental eBay purchase arrived. I can bid on this, clearly, I won't win it, right? Awhile ago, I had picked up some Grey Hunters for possibly making into a Kill Teams with possible options for gun loadouts. Terminators would really be cool to add to a Kill Team as well would they? Anyways, here I am, 4 Space Wolves Terminators richer, only one painted for Kill Team so far.

Brother Brand "Fiery Torch", Brother Manning, and Brother Steinar

Brother Amund - Leader

The crew ready to cleanse a derelict Space Hulk 

    I painted up all the fun weapon loadouts first, it just squeaks into a regular list of Kill Team at 99 points. I don't really have a Commander to add to this warband, as most of the options are Primaris marines which would look a bit tall to their elderly brethren. The Terminators that remain all have boltguns with chainfist or power fist and don't have as much Space Wolfie-ness to them. That is, till I add a pelt with greenstuff or find bits.

    Now why do you have your Space Wolves Kill Team on a Space Hulk board? Well, a bit of a long story, as went down three or four rabbit holes, then through a swamp and past grandma's house to end up here. I started by looking up Stormtonnian models as I was debating on buying one of the older starter sets after buying Sorrowmourn Choir. Anyways, I found, Tears of Envy's blog, which might make me want to collect some Stormcast for kitbashs, maybe do some chaos stormcast too? 

    After looking back in the blog, I found some amazing looking Space Hulk 3D terrain, mostly kit bashed from several other terrain kits. 3rd party custom rules also were on my mind as well, like adding different chapters, factions and the like into Space Hulk. This will definitely be a long hole to dig myself out of.

Oh yeah, reading to Rosalind is the other hobby of mine I have been working on.

Next on the Hobby Desk

    Time to finish up the dwarves? I have will eventually pick up the new rule book for Age of Sigmar. That might wait till August when GW announces the new smaller starter sets. Part of the reason for my frantic hobby habits, might partially be due to not getting games in, might need to fix that.

 

Blog? What Blog

      Hey guys! I am alive and have been doing a lot of  gaming and painting since.... uh basically last year around this time.... I'll get better at this I promise! Let's go back in time and see what I was up to in 2019!

                 My FLGS, Comic Readers, hosts the Prairie Game Expo at a community center for one day of gaming that is free to the public and is a great way to learn new games and meet new people. This year they added a painting competition, I entered my Horticulous Slimux and my Carnosaurs, but he wasn't quite done. Lots of very talented artists, I didn't take any picks of the other entries, but there were some Star Wars Legion, Warmachine and both Warhammers. I mostly entered to give me an incentive to paint this guy up, I like he turned out pretty well.

I finished off all of Blackstone fortress miniatures, I'll need to take a picture of the other enemy units later. I have played a handful of games. Characters that aren't played are stored in "stasis" to keep their gear for next time, which is nice if you want to try out another character.

Purchased and painted all of Resident Evil 2 The Board Game (also finished the Remake too). Enemies react to the players, which gives the game a really tense feeling.

Picked up some Savage Orks to use for WarCry, still haven't gotten around to playing the game yet!

Painted up some Eldar for Kill Team, which turned into a bit of an army as I bought the Wake the Dead half from someone.

Start of the Vostroyan Firstborn Kill Team, glad to get these guys done in November as I had bought them when GW had them on Made to Order at the start of the year!

#minivember challenge in November, 30 models in 30 days. I was 5 models short, which I finished early December.

      My girlfriend, Rachel, bought some Sylvaneth awhile ago, but got a huge lot from one of our friends (thanks Michael!) So it was time for her to learn how to play, I started her out with the AOS 2.0 skirmish. Highlights of the match was my general struggling off 3 mortal wounds (bless nurgle!) from her general's spell and the stalemate between four dryads and my plague drone above, it didn't help that the Dryads had a -1 to hit due to their tree behind them

Finished off to core sets of Stormtroopers for Star Wars Legion.

          I did participate in two tournaments this year, one was a learning process for me as I hadn't played much of my Death Guard for the first tourney. The second one was a four player doubles tourney, it was nice to have a team mate and only 1000 points to worry about.