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! 

Human Barbarian and Tortle Monk

    I am back for two entries for the Paint An Adventuring Party Challenge. Moving forward, I might just be painting up characters without the backstory. I find that I am quite slow at writing them up and posting them. Not only did I fall off the proverbial challenge wagon, but then fell off a cliff, hitting every jagged edge on the way down. Cut me some slack, I got a mini human to look after.

    May's entry is a human Barbarian from Reaper Miniatures, Galdor the Barbarian. He is a metal miniature, that I probably picked up when Dragon's Den was clearing out their Reaper models to make room for Wizkids. Working on using different colours for skin tones like Leadballoony Warcry Spire Tyrants. Don't think I got very close to his, but it was refreshing to try green and yellows for skin. 

Ack! Where did these spiders come from!

    June's entry is a Tortle Monk from Wizkids. A tortle was a homebrew race for 5th edition, but looks like the stat line can be bought on D&D Beyond now. I enjoyed painting the yellow robes, not a whole lot to paint but I might have to give it a try as a primary colours. The Wizkids minis come in twos, that might be a good colour for the second Tortle in the set.

     I find myself more fond of painting Reaper Miniatures for the amount of character they have in their models, I am attributing this to the style they are going for, more factory friendly and less life in their sculpts. Wizkids are good for a quick paint job, already being pre-primed. On paint runs to Comic Readers, I would usually pick up one or two of these when they were a bit cheaper around $5. Now that they are closer to $7-8, I mostly just grab a monsters as I don't find the humanoid models as detailed. That said, I do have a few kicking around that will appear during this challenge.

Next on the Hobby Desk

    I complete some more giant spiders, and Blackstone Fortress cultists. The latter of which have been sitting on my "abandoned heap". It was the last thing I was working on before moving to my current house, lost in the shuffle and buried under other more fun projects.

Penticton

   In an effort to spend quality time with Rachel's mom, her family booked a trip together to Penticton. Rachel's sister has a house there with her family. I was nice to have other kids for Rosalind to interact with. Cousin One is a 4 year old with a plethora of energy (what four year old doesn't?) and Cousin Two is 6 days younger then Rosie but isn't yet walking. 

    

    We drove to Edmonton to catch the plane to BC for $50 each way, how crazy is that? I sure wish Regina had direct routes like that! Not that I'm much of a flyer. I have a fear of highs, which is all fine on an airplane as long as I am not falling out of said aircraft. I actually do enjoy looking out the window and seeing all the mountain ranges and lakes and bonkers flat prairies when we land back in Alberta. 

    Before this year and last year,  I had only been to BC once. When I was 10, my family drove to Vancouver. We spent time at the Butchard Gardens, rode a ferry to the island and rented a cabin in Ninaimo, BC. There was also some visiting of Uncles and Great Aunts throughout the trip.

    In Penticton, there are bike lanes all around! Electric bikes are fairly common on the paths. I originally thought that took away from the experience, the point of a bike is to be fit and go places right? I wasn't thinking of major health problems as you age or whatever the case. Electric bikes assist those who need it and the more bikes on the road the better the infrastructure, hopefully. Some people are opposed to the bike lanes, on the board walk, there was a lady with a bristle board complaining about the bike lanes in small print. Who are you talking to? The tourists? Like that's going to change anything!

    Anyways! Bikes are great PERIOD. Rachel and I did manage to get some board games in with some of the family. We played Five Tribes, which we both haven't played, and Wingspan. 

    Five Tribes I had hear was good, and it is. I think the "worker placement" part of the game is a great change of pace for the traditional pick what you want to do type games. Instead you pick up any group of works on a tile and spread them out like bread crumbs from the original tile. On the last tile you pick up all the same coloured meeples as the last meeple in the line. Each colour is a different action to play out. Rachel beat me by 2 points with the other players being about 20 and 40 points more, not too bad for our first times.

    Wingspan is one of the only board game that Rachel's sister will play. We had some odd end of game bonuses, like Birds looking Right. Which I focused almost exclusively on throughout the game. Rachel won, of course, but the scores were 105,106, 107 and 111, the 107 being mine. That's only one more round of laying eggs or one more bird! Crazy! The copy of Wingspan also had 3D printed token holder and bird house action selection markers, linked for the Wingnuts out there. I might've sent those files to my local library that night to be printed so they would be ready when I returned home.

    We went on hikes through the forests, one which had a stream running parallel to the path. Swam in the lakes, and took in a farmer's market as well as visited family and such. 

So proud of her stick!

Discovering puddles on our morning walk

    There was a lot of down time for me during the evening, as I would stay and watch Rosalind so Rachel could visit with her family more. This meant that I surfed eBay quite a bit, and found a listing for some Imperial Guard Sentinels. Four Sentinels for the price of one new one.... ish. They aren't in the best shape, after putting in an offer and getting it accepted, I thought maybe these were metal Sentinels not described as such in the listing. They arrived a couple days ago and wasn't the case. 

    Sentinels are one of my favourite vehicles from the Imperial Guard line. I owned one sentinel before buying this lot so now I have 5! These would make for a good combat patrol, scouting out the frontline for the heavy support. Seeing as I picked up Sly Marbo for the previous edition of Kill Team and the store reopening/ support independent model, the Catachan Colonel. I think building a small Catachan force might be in my future if new models from GW come out or I find decent 3rd party miniatures.

    The weekend I got back from BC, I was able to go to a Warcry Tournament at our local GW store. Got three games in with my Slaanesh Daemons, with an ally of Vasillac the Gifted. 

Setup all original starter set Warcry Terrain

    The first round, I was paired against a warband made up of units from the Cursed City box. The blood born vampires, the one perched on ruins on it's base, were able to keep up with Slaansesh speed wise and did some good damage. The ogre was very tanky, taking them out wasn't an option. I mainly went for the objective of getting units off the board, but should have taken out more of his warband to deny him points. Lost the first round.

    I had a buy for round two. Third round I won, as it was a game of keep away against slow orcs. Due to a poor decision of activation, I almost lost the treasure which would have costed me the round. Silly me didn't take pictures, oops!

   At the end of the day we had a battle royal with 500 pts each with five players. Victory went to the warband that was holding the treasure at the end of round four. The other Slaanesh player brought Fiends which are able to climb, unlike my mounted Seekers. Letting him escape over terrain and leaving me in the dust.

View from my starting area

    Death and order had a bit of a grudge match in the opposite corner of the map, mostly due to how slow they both were. 

    This tournament has gotten me excited to keep playing Warcry, even if there is rumoured to be another version coming out this summer. And based on the turn out, two chaos, one order, two death and two destruction warbands) I want to start a Cities of Sigmar flavoured warband. There is a lot of variety and customization that can be added to the warband. A crew from Hammerhal Ghyra might have Stormcast Eternals of the Hallowed Knight or Anvils of Heldenhammer variety or Sylvaneth to aid them, where as the Aqshy might have Ironweld Arsenal at their disposal. What about Anvilguard? Under morathi's control the Daughters of Khaine and Black Arc Corsairs would fit in nicely. Lots of choices! I picked up some Freeguild guard and Crossbowmen from Varagesale for cheap to start with, all I know is this project could get wildly out of hand! I am already looking at the Demigryph Knights longingly.....

Next on the Hobby Desk!

    I plan to join the Season of Scenery Challenge started by Dave Stone which starts on July 1st and runs to August 31st. In the last week of June, I have been finishing up miniatures that were an inch away from finish. Chaos cultists from Blackstone fortress, Metal Slaanesh Fiends and of course continuing with the Character of the Month Challenge, which I am really behind on! I have May finished, just need to post it with a story and June's character is getting close to being done too.

Triple the Glott, Triple the Fun! - Monster May(hem)

         Here we are, final day of May. More importantly, the end of the Monster May(hem) challenge! I didn't get around to the Idoneth Deepkin, instead I opted to paint some of the Giant Spiders I picked up from Wargames Atlantic as they can be used in Rangers of Shadowdeep which requires 6 or more. A quick peek through the rules and I didn't find anything about what base size these giants spiders should be. The box comes with 12 of each size so that shouldn't be a problem.

    These boxes are great, they have victims that are wrapped up in webbing and options to make sci-fi spiders with guns! If the stinger wasn't lethal enough, the plasma gun will be! Combining a Goblin box from WA allows you to make Spider Riders, pretty nifty box. However, not having instructions and fiddly spider legs doesn't make it easy to assemble. A good trick is using baking soda with your plastic glue, makes it harden quickly so you can get onto the other 7 legs and 2 mandibles. In the future, I might use the plasma gun arms of the spiders on some Tyranids, there is also some cybernetic implants too. 

    Someone reminded me on a comment on Facebook that due to rules changes (and also new shiny models), The Glottkin is now over priced for points and no longer has the keyword Daemon. Clearly, this lump of flesh is a Mortal. I am probably the last person to follow meta for games, Rule of Cool is number one in my books. Looking up the base size, it is a 130mm, which a Great Unclean One is also on. Could easily be a proxy model for his daemon counterpart, not in tournaments of course but in friendly games. 

        I painted Ghurek's left tentacle with a rotten segment on the upper section. I figured this was the start of his putrid mutation, bound with rope in hopes of stopping the spread of the diseased flesh only for it to consume his whole body. For the base I used Crayola Model Magic Clay, I purchased a box of six packets and one of them covered this base. For the pools of standing water, I used a mix of white glue and Super glue. For my first time, I also created a brown ink wash to cover Ghurek's body. All and all, I am pleased with the results, especially my base. It's not that I am getting better, but more that I am trying new technics and putting time in them. My skaven were the first models that I started to paint my bases for and they have come a ways since then.

    So with the Glottkin being three brothers and my 6 spiders, that's nine models for Monster May(hem) right?

    I really enjoyed painting monsters over the month, maybe next year I will go for quantity instead. Don't forget to check out the other entries on Angry Piper's blog as he will have a round up there.

Next on the Hobby Desk

    I will be on vacation* for a good section of June, but I will be participating in a Warcry Tournament once I get back. My time away will help me decide what warband to bring. I probably should try to do some scenery.... if only there was a challenge for it....

*Parental leave but with beaches!

    

Jujosz - Character of the Month (April)

         Oh boy, dragging my feet a bit with these Character of the Month entries. This will be my April entry, Jujosz is a metal reaper miniature. I was opposed to basing him on the square base he came on, but I just thought I was being basist, all bases look good on the tabletop... besides those shitty Wizkids flat discs. 

    Vindex, a town of wealth, for those that had it, was paradise. The rich owned the City Watch, making sure their position on the top would never falter and keep their hands clean of any criminal activity. The wealthy elite would compete against each other, three families are paramount in Vindex. 

    Xilmaris, a pure bloodline of Drow elves, they control the refining factories that dot the outskirts of the town. Workers are paid barely a living wage, it is also common for petty criminals to work off their debt to society in the factories. Speak to the right foreman and for the right price, they can send one of the workers a message for you in the form of "accidental" maiming in the workplace. Of course, some of these incidents might go sideways resulting in death instead.

    Ahjkar are preoccupied by keeping up appearances, this family of Rakshasa might look young but they are centuries old. The secret to their youth is harvesting genetic traits from other species for elixirs. They sell off potions that have short durations, which makes sure customers return frequently. Through experimentation, they have found the Drow prove to have several traits of worth, especially full breed Drow, which has fueled many family feuds between the two houses. 

    Liloxora are dishonored Tieflings, outcasts in their own race they are mercenaries for the highest bidder. The Xilmaris would use a nepotism model to support their own business, hiring those members of the family that lacked empathy to be Captain of the Watch. These soldiers would economically bully society, keeping the peace in Vindex and sniffing out an "enemies of the state."

Jujosz

Zombie rave in the dungeon

    Jujosz had the unfortunate luck of being born in Vindex, his family was tied to the city. His father worked in the refinery and mother was a blacksmith. Fleeing from the raids on smaller towns, they found work in Vindex, raising their family. Jujosz, was the youngest of three, discovered his talents for healing at the age of 6 (about 20 in human years). Sharing it with the community in the slums of Vindex.

    The Ahjkar took notice of his skills, he was offered a position as a cleric at their shop. Spending time with the lower levels of the community he knew that the Ahjkar were not to be trusted. He refused, and while he was praying at the cloister, he was captured. Forced into service for the corrupt Ahjkar, tending to their weak experiments, keeping them alive to extend their harvesting of genetic material. Will Jujosz be able to escape his captors?

    This miniature is from the metal line of Reaper Miniatures called Dragonman Cleric, T'kay. I have had it for awhile, really like the look of this sculpt. I also have his Fighter friend, Kar'Drakir unpainted, so maybe he will show up in one of the Character of the Month entry. I recently watched Fantasic Mr. Fox, so I think the idea of three families that ran a town sunk into my story.

Next on the Hobby Desk

    Well, I hope it's the next Character of the Month as it is the end of May! I do have the Glottkin to a good place to call it finished. Tomorrow is the last day, might as well use the time to add any finishing touches to it.

Shadows of Brimstone - Core Set

 In April, I finished off my City of the Ancients Core Set for Shadows of Brimstone, yes, definitely not very timely with this post. At the end of last year, I had two heroes and the Goliath to finish off. I painted up the female Drifter for good measure, not in the core set, for Rachel to play. 

All the beasties in the starter set

Goliath

Drifter (expansion), Gunslinger and Saloon Girl

    While painting the Saloon Girl, I realized her hat sits flat on her head in all of the artwork in and on the box. The sculpt looks more gothic lolita then what is portraited on the front of the box, or maybe that's me, either way, she has a jaunty hat in my version.

Reenactment of a "Holy Shit" moment in game

    Wednesday night, my brothers, Shawn and Nathan, Rachel and I played the tutorial scenario for Shadows of Brimstone. We started by creating characters, Shawn went with the Bandido, Nathan the Gunslinger and Rachel the Saloon Girl (mostly because I didn't print off the Drifter's character sheet). I was the U.S. Marshal, a character I played previous in a Solo play. Everyone gets a personal item to flesh out their character, Rachel's Saloon Girl had a journal as a personal item that will probably tell of the horrors we encounter, and as a warning to those who find it should we fail!

First Exploration, a summoning circle, well, time to go home

    The summoning circle has it's own Advanced rules, which we ignored for our first run of the game, a lot of the tiles have additional rules. I do like how you can ease yourself into learning the game and bring in more rules as you get more familiar with the basic mechanics.

The first, and only fight we had. 

Gunslinger Nathan unloaded his deadly pistol into the first Night Horror

Dynomite from the Bandido took out the last two, with some help from the Saloon Girl and Slinger

    Not much fighting in our first game, which was fine as some of the fun was scavenging on each tile. These are random events that add flavour to the adventure, like how Nathan's character found a dead body at the entrance of the mine full of bandages. We started calling him a mummy, as he had 3rd bandage token from character creation.

    On the second tile, one of the events was called Tracks in the Dust, letting our party smash down a seemingly dead end. This would guarantee a clue on the next time, collecting two clues would lead us to Dark Stone and the final encounter with the horrors.  So of course that's what all the characters did besides Rachel, who wanted to explore (and her strength wasn't very good anyways.) Along her journey she meant a prospector and a room full of steam, both could have led to encounters, instead had some loot. 

    While fighting the Night Horrors in the final battle, I used my inflated ego (my Marshal's badge) to buff everyone's shooting or combat. This must have went to my character's head, as even with 3 shots for my shotgun that rolls D8 (instead of D6), I got three 1's on my dice. 

    I didn't get any experience points for killing the horrors, but exploring, scavenging and healing others all give you XP. So healer characters can still level up with the more aggressive characters. The game also scales nicely, potentially adding 2 more characters to a game, though our kitchen could barely contain a small map with four players.

    I have a few expansions that I really want to get at, but I already have a Glottkin to paint for May. Was very tempted to just assemble one of them anyways, clearly, I trying to find anything to distract me from painting the Glottkin. But the real monster of May is the gray tide, oh and procrastination! 

Next on the Hobby Desk

    I did get some painting in on the Glottkin, probably should show off some of my work on it as well as post my Character of the Month for April & May (once I actually pick one and finish it!) The backstories are bogging me down a bit.

    

Monster May(hem) 2022

    This year I will be participating in Angry Piper's Monster May(hem). He has been running it every year now for quite sometime. And every year there are some mind blowing entries. Take a look at some amazing work by theses fellow bloggers. 

    The basic premise to the challenge is to paint your monsters! The more beastly and yearning for wanton and destruction the better. It's just the beginning so contact the angry piper if you are looking to add your blog/ Instagram for his shout out of all the beautifully ignorant rampaging creatures throughout the month. I will also post my progress here throughout the month.

    A couple years back, I started work on my Glottkin with the idea of using it as a wandering monster in Warcry. Not wanting everything in my Nurgle army to be green, I opted to paint in blues and purples. This model has been toppled off of its pedestal as ugliest mother trucker in Nurgle armies after the new battletome came out last year, replaced by the Hygienically Challenged One. Points wise, The Glottkin is almost double the points, now that's an odor some players would find offensive! But hey, I was smitten by this putrid chunk of a rot it might as well get used in games.

I bought him off eBay around 3-4 years ago, it came assembled. To be honest, I haven't painted a model this big, and if I did, I would vastly prefer subassembly. So I am finding starting this project a bit daunting.

My baseline for the Glottkin

    Lots more basecosting to go, might get a bit distracted with smaller monsters throughout the month. My Idoneth Deepkin fit perfectly into this challenge, sea elves that harvest souls of the living to survive. Teclis' Monsters, if you will. 

     The Glottkin is actually a literal name, representing three kin with the surname Glott. Otto, who wields his dad's scythe, who was a farmer. Ghurk once tall and handsome now is a beast of burden that carries his brothers on his back. And Ethrac a powerful Socerceror of Nurgle. This has basically stayed the same into Age of Sigmar. I never played Warhammer Fantasy Battle, but I do have some of the faction rule books that I flip through from time to time. When I read about the World-that-was, I find myself wanting to know more about it.