Season of Scenery 2022 Part 2

     So as with the last SoS post, let's start with what new shiny has distracted me in.... ONE MONTH! I might have a wee problem... let's call a dragon's horde of opportunity as a result of my habits. Lately, painting up Dark Eldar for Space Hulk (mostly) has peaked my interest. Someone was selling all his army, so I picked out a Talos, a squad of 5 Scourges and a squad of 5 Mandrakes. In my head, the Talos could be used as boss in Space Hulk. There are fan made rules for a Dreadnaught so why not try fitting a Talos, clearly a less bulky cousin. Harlequin have rules, which would probably play similar to Dark Eldar.

    The other pick ups are for Cities of Sigmar, Black Arc Corsairs was a box sitting at my FLGS that was pre-pandemic priced. I always liked the look of them, with their Cthulhu inspired armour and PIRATES! YAR! And a random Battletech mech for.... fun! Wee! The other Cities miniatures, are Great Swords, Demigryph Knights (recast), a metal Battlemage and Free guild pistoliers (recast). I am not one to buy recasts new as they are usually on some Chinese site, but these were local. That should be enough to give me some options for a warband!

    I start a terrain challenge only to be drawn back to miniatures. After painting up the Lucky Gods terrain, I wanted to continue with the samurai themed miniatures. The Reaper miniatures kickstarter Daimyo set has several dinosaurs kitted out in ancient Japanese wear. Nice little break between terrain, I would have done some more, but realized I was just procrastinating on the terrain.

Parasaurolophus Kyudo

Samurai T-Rex

Ninja Dactyle

    Typical Jon, I get a bit stalled out on terrain sometime, especial ones that I am making myself. I get about half way through a piece and doubt my process. That's too big, I need less of that, why did I do that? Yadda ya all these pieces! Yadda, yadda. You know, hobby hang ups. This time I took a different angle, what if I don't make clean terrain? Lets get dirty with it!

First up, multi-use tree, cave people for scale, I wanted to allow movement underneath the tree. The tree is ancient, life always seems to cling to it despite almost looking deceased . Generations of tribes tell of an evil that lurks beneath this undying sentinel, one that has pushed the earth and uprooted life. Nature keeps this darkness at bay... for now.

    I also did a few objective markers for PrimEvo, resources to find or fight over, some bones for weapons and shelter and flint for warmth. Make a few more for food and hides too. This piece of terrain turned out fairly heavy with the plaster of paris on the tree. I probably could have just painted up the cloth mache that was over my wire frame. I picked up some winter trees at Michael's on my last visit, these would be good for a winter board for PrimEVO, but could be used for Super Mission Force or Don't Look Back as well.

    

    My first thoughts on this 3D Space Hulk piece was to throw on everything but the kitchen sink and grime it all up. BUT what if the ship had lower decks that some cults were worshipping chaos gods? With a peak into my bits box, I didn't really have the right stuff for an ritual alter. However, maybe it wasn't Chaos, but Dark Eldar having a bit of fun with their victims.

    Filleted flesh pinned to the wall, a massacred Salamander Space Marine left as a warning to those that would enter into their territory. I made a flesh sack of body parts from multiple victims too, but didn't find a good spot on it for this walkway with out impeding functionality. Which is to accommodate 40mm Terminator bases and visible squares to actually play the game. I left the back of the harddrive mount open for now, mostly didn't know what material to use for closing it off. I don't have much for sculpting tools, something which should get fixed in the future.

Sector Mechanicus Forgeshrine is up next, corrosion on the sides adds a nice lived in feel to the board. But is it enough? My inner nurgle player side says I didn't go far enough, coat the whole model in decay! If I did that, what's the point of spending my Jon bucks on featureless blobs of entropy? To please Papa nurgle of course!

Next on the Hobby Desk!

September is here! And with a month away from spooky month, what does a closet vampire work on between challenges? Why his skeletons challenges in his closet of course! Time to get back to the character of the month challenge and either actual skeletons or something to prepare to play Don't look Back in October.

Season of Scenery 2022 Part 1

    We reach the halfway point to the Season of Scenery. Summer is slow for painting for me, we have been camping in Kenosee with my family for a couple of days and trying out tenting with our 15 month old daughter at Echo lake. It was only one night, and it went well with our dark room tent that we purchased, hoping to use it regularly in the summers to come. 

    To start off the challenge. I actually made a purchase off of Thunder Games & Gifts. On Canada Day, they have a 15% off their Used and New GW produces. I focused on getting miniatures for Warcry, and Space Hulk. Warpfire Thrower and a Warplock Jezzrail to add some range to my rats. This will go nicely with the 40 some clanrats, a Clawlord and Warlock Engineer that I picked up a few months ago. I also picked up some Bestigors, mostly enjoy these models, and 10 of them would be a solid start for a warband. This is the same reason I picked up the Shadow Warrrors/ Sisters of the Watch, great models, good start for Warcry. I could also assemble it 5 of each unit. The Contorted Epitome can fit in with AOS or Warycry. A Chaplain and Grey Knight Terminator for Space Hulk, hope to use them as auxiliary units to Imperial Guard or Sisters of Battle squads. And finally, a piece of Cities of Death terrain. I originally wanted to dismantle it and use it for bits, now that I have my hands on it, I really like this terrain. Tight corridor on the bottom, nice walk way on top and of course loads of skulls!

    Alright, so that's what I bought, what did I actually paint? The first thing I painted was the 3D printed modular dungeon tiles I ordered from the library in October of last year. 

32 Cavern Tiles

Descent miniature to test scale

    The tiles work best with 25mm or smaller bases, the dead ends and hallways get a bit tricky to see which "square" the miniatures are in. I painted it up with underwater theme in mind, I would add more details to the tiles, but as you can see, space is pretty limited.

    I am a frequent patron of second hand stores, usually wandering down toy to find inspiration for terrain. On a recent journey, I found these two Japanese statuettes which seemed like they would fit in nicely as cover in a game of Ronin. Being the rash painter, I didn't actually snap some quick pictures before slapping paint on them. They were a pale white, one idea was to make them look like ancient stone, instead I went with a more worn red wood look. 

    I still need to spray some glue/ water mixture on the growth to keep it in place. Digging a bit deeper, I found out that they are two of the Seven Lucky Gods.

Hotei, the god of contentment and happiness

Bishamonten, God of Warriors

    After finishing this piece, I finished painting some Rising Sun's Koi Clan Bushi (Samurai) to show off the scale of the statues, formerly on the heap of abandonment. September might turn into a board game miniature painting month, just need to come up with a catchier title that will inspire me to start. I picked up Dragon Tides and Zpocalypse from Amazing Stories in June on their dinged and dented sale. Zpocalypse comes with a boat load of zombies and Dragon Tides has Bruce Lee and Brandon Lee figures.

    That's not all I have been working on, just what I have finished. I have a couple WIPs to show off too. 

    Using a computer hard drive mounting bracket as it's base, with several items that I have "saved" from the recycling bin, I have started on a Space Hulk passageway. Printing off a few of these Zone Mortalis style tiles, I have found that they all are different scales, and the two on here are the best size for 40mm bases. 

    The second piece of terrain I have in progress, is a tree I made with cloth mach back in 2018 when I made my homemade Feculent Gnarlmaw. This was the first time I dabbled with Plaster of Paris on a model, it looks fine, beside the fact that I wasn't sure on which way to orient my tree at the time. The plaster makes the tree quite top heavy, to the point that simply gluing it down might not hold it very well. Remembering I had some twine... somewhere, I thought it might be a cool idea to tie the tree down to the foam rocks. As if the tree was a site to hold some evil beneath the ground. Now to just find where the heck I placed that twine!

Next on the Hobby Desk

    I don't have a running theme with the terrain, but I do have a butt load of recycling to pick through for the next/ current projects. The pentium 3 that I dismantled also has a lot of fun pieces to use up. So probably more Sci-fi terrain? The Reaper Bones Kickstarter pledge I bought was Japanese inspired miniatures. Anyone up for dinosaur and undead samurai? 

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.