Day 1461 - a 4th year of paint-on-brush (Nick)

So yesterday was an incredible 4 years since Carl & I started trying to put 'paint on brush', and sadly this post feels like a carbon copy of the one I made 12 months ago!

For me it was just 3 finishes again, while Carl has had another bumper year with 57(?).

All started with good intentions to make amends, and then big changes in February meant I ended up travelling the UK & Europe a lot and living out of a suitcase as it were.

Despite a brave attempt to carry on and at least do 'something' every day, it soon became clear that it was just one more thing I didn't need to worry about and I have been out of the gaming & hobby circle completely for 9 months and I am only just getting back into it now the winter draws in.

It will take me a while to get back onboard with the hobby side of things, especially as the mantra has been completely out the window for a long time now... it may get there, it may not, but I've started playing a few games again and having a deep dive into my stash so you never know?

Age of Sigmar Chaos Chariot (Carl)

I recently finished my Slaves to Darkness Chaos Chariot. Aside from my attempts to wear away at the lead (& plastic) mountain I had the added incentive to get this finished as I’d committed to going to an evening Age of Sigmar Spearhead event at Warhammer World.

The Chaos Chariot was the only model I didn’t have ready for the event so it got bumped up the painting queue. But due to a combination of family life and work shifts I ran the painting very close to the wire completing it in the morning of the event. The build was generally quite enjoyable, I built and painted it in subassemblies however, due to running so close in time, I had to cut a few corners on the painting so the horses and a few details aren’t as ‘finished’ as I’d ideally have liked.

My main gripe was the reins, by all the gods of hobbying they were a challenge, it might have been my build skills but I struggled. After much swearing, huffing and general bad tempered moaning I resigned myself to having a gap that I couldn’t avoid. But in a flash of inspiration I cut a spiky bit from the haft of an unused axehead from the kit and shaped it to the gap, hurrah! Problem solved. If I hadn’t got so wound up with trying to match the kit instructions and simply trusted hobby experience I could have got to this solution a lot quicker. Something to try to remember.

I was gifted this model for my birthday earlier this year and I’ve actually got it completed within six months! That’s a big deal for me.

At the event, a casual affair with ‘Quests’ to complete along with playing the games, I had a win and a draw and completed about half of the quests. It was loads of fun to play in and using a painted force was a big ‘feel good’ moment for me. My opponents were lovely chaps, there were a lot of beautifully painted armies present and good natured story swapping and chat amongst players. A very enjoyable experience all round.

So that’s another completion for 2024 putting my total on 32!

Age of Sigmar Chaos Lord (Carl)

Another finish for 2024 and it’s the Chaos Lord for Age of Sigmar. Unlike a lot of the other chaos minis I’ve been working on, this one has been incredibly quick and straight forward.

Although I did have a bit of a crisis with the blade of his glaive. I got it to the point where I was happy with it. Then, I don’t know why, I tried to do a little bit of glowing effect bling, failed terribly and had to repaint it to bring it back to where it is now.

Other than that, pretty easy.

Total minis completed in 2024 now at 31!

Slaves to Darkness Chaos Knight (Carl)

After months of inactivity I’ve finally finished the last Chaos Knight for my Slaves to Darkness Age of Sigmar force.

I’ve not managed to pick up a brush in months due to work and home being busy.

This takes my tally of completions for the year to 30. Got to get my mojo rolling a lot faster if I want to complete 52 by year end.

Warcry (Age of Sigmar) Darkoath Savagers (Carl)

The last day of May sees me finally scrape in with two finishes. Hobby time this month has been consumed by cleaning up and priming the Darkoath Savager models from Games Workshop’s Warcry game.

They’ll be performing double duty for me as part of my Slaves to Darkness Age of Sigmar army.

To say that I’ve been swearng, moaning, ranting and generally crying during the process of cleanup and build of the Darkoath models is an understatement. I intensely dislike the way the models have been split and compiled on the sprues. Half a forearm!? Sheesh.

Anyway, that aside, when they’re built and primed they’re lovely models, full of Conan style character.

Pictured here are my first two (out of ten) finishes. Hopefully in June I’ll get the other eight done along with, more importantly, my final Chaos Knight.

These two models make my total completions for the year so far 29!

Tzeentch old Warhammer/Battlemasters Chaos Knight (Carl)

Another completion towards my Age of Sigmar Chaps Knights unit, this time a Tzeentch themed Knight.

It’s another old GW/Battlemasters model, I wasn’t entirely sure where I was going with the colour scheme so it’s a bit darker than I wanted but it’s finished.

That makes 27 completions in 2024 and only one Knight left to go to complete the unit.

Old Warhammer/Battlemasters Chaos Knight (Carl)

 

Hot on the heels of the sweetly scented allure of the old Realms of Chaos Slaaneshi Chaos Knight follows the no less pungent Nurgle Knight.

This time the model is one of the old Games Workshop & MB Games collaboration Battermasters models. This one was quite quick to do, I do think Nurgle themed models allow for a looser approach to applying colours.

Total completions: 26 for the year!

Warhammer Realms of Chaos Knight (Carl)

More progress on the Slaves to Darkness army for Age of Sigmar, this time an old Warhammer Realms of Chaos knight.

I’ve painted this one to be the Slaanesh representive for the unit. The intention is to have all four chaos powers represented and an Undivided knight leading them. I’ve already got a Khornate knight painted from when I started the project a while back.

This completion means I’m now onto 25 completions in 2024.

Warcry Fomoroid Crusher (Carl)

Another finish for the year! This time the Fomoroid Crusher for Warcry (and Age of Sigmar). I absolutely love this model, so much that I’m actually considering getting another one to build and paint the other variant.

I had a bit of a wobble on the colour scheme halfway through. I had to do a bit of an overpaint on the bandages/wraps around his arms but otherwise it was pretty straight forward.

This completion puts me at 24 for 2024. I’ve got a good pace going on at the moment despite a few periods of inactivity.

Completed Tarantulos Warcry Warband (Carl)

It’s a month since completing my first model (partly delayed due to having surgery) but I’ve finally completed my Tarantulos warband for Warcry.

The models are also part of my Age of Sigmar Slaves to Darkness army. Completing them also puts my AoS 1000 point force over halfway to completion as, combined with my Chaos Warriors unit, there’s now two thirds of the total models painted.

They’re based as with most of my GW models to represent a desert/wasteland theme. Quite happy with them now I’ve battled through the fiddly details.

This also puts my total completed models in 2024 at 23! Woohoo!

Warcry Tarantulos Brood (Carl)

 After quite a long gap I’ve managed another finish for 2024. This is the first of the Tarantulos Brood for Warcry, the models are also part of my Slaves to Darkness Age of Sigmar army so two games for one model.

I’ve had them sitting primed with skin tones done in Carroburg Crimson for months. But that skin tone had kept them from being finished. I wasn’t keen. But I finally gave myself a good talking too and just went with it.

These models are very fiddly, I think they’re going to take quite a while to complete. But at least I’ve got my first one done to get a feel for the colour combinations.

Looking at it now, I don’t entirely fall out with it.

Old Warhammer Chaos Warriors (Carl)

We’re into February already! Blimey the year is already whistling by.

I’ve managed to complete the remaining 7 Chaos Warriors for my 10 man unit for my Age of Sigmar Slaves to Darkness 1000pt force. They were a bit of a slog as I got a bit lost halfway through with ideas of doing clearly defined followers of Khorne, Tzeentch, Nurgle and Slaanesh.

My original plan was to do two each of the four powers and plus two undivided to make a truly balanced (undivided) unit. But I got a bit distracted. The final unit (which I’ll do a full shot of when the whole army is finished) has four clearly defined followers, four hinted at and two undivided. It still works just differently to my original intention.

Anyway, here’s the seven completions that along with the three previously finished mean I’ve got one completed unit for my Ages of Sigmar force! Hooray!

This also makes 10 actual completions in 2024!

Warhammer: The Old World - Chaos Marauder (Nick)

Following hot on the heels of Carl's chaos warrior are some of my own old Warhammer chaos miniatures - with the imminent release of Warhammer: The Old World from Games Workshop it seemed like a good excuse to get my Warriors of Chaos army onto the table at last with good old fashioned square bases.

Here are my first two Chaos Marauders, old metal figures from 1997 (and in my opinion so much nicer than the plastic ones that replaced them) - to be fair I only had a bit of touching up to do, remove some old static grass, and varnish while I try my best to match the colours again ...and these are great because the base size hasn't been changed for the new (old) game.

I'm sure I will add some dead grass and tufts in the future, but with so many to do I think I will leave them like this for now and come back to them when the unit or maybe even the army is complete (rather than have some finished and others not)

A bit cheeky calling these x2 finishes, but they are my gateway to more which are already on the way and not the first figures to just need varnish and (not) tufts... let's see where this new madness takes us!

Old Warhammer/Battlemasters Chaos Warrior (Carl)

 After a couple of days with no progress I’ve managed to complete one of the Chaos Warriors for my Age of Sigmar Slaves to Darkness force. The model is one of the earlier plastic citadel Chaos Warriors which also saw action in the GW & MB collaboration game Battlemasters.

It’s a poor photo (quickly taken on the phone in poor light) but here it is, completion number 3 of 2024.

I’ve got a couple more Chaos Warriors close to completion so they’ll hopefully be finished in the next few days.

WW2 panel fence (Nick)

Progress! ...after yesterday's rather dismal summary of the last 12 months, here is my first finish of 2024 - a (resin) wooden fence section from Warlord Games.

There are in fact eight of these sections altogether as I bought 2 packs of 4, however with the lack of finishes since March last year and no results of the big end of year push I wanted to show something for my efforts.

Painting was a fairly simple drybrushing affair over black prime with an old Citadel Foundation Paint: Charadon Granite, followed by Vallejo Game Colour: Beasty Brown, Miniature Paints: Earth Brown, and finally Army Painter: Skeleton Bone.
The base was then drybrushed two shades of craft shop grey before following up with my usual earth recipe.

I have also managed these sci-fi scatter terrain pieces, but won't class them as finished just yet as I want to base them with the other 6 I have to paint (mainly to protect the resin from damage) - so still not heaps of progress, but a little every day to start the new year:

2023 a year in review (Nick)

Well for me 2023 can be summed up very easily, just 3 finishes... yes THREE finishes!!

To say I'm disappointed is an understatement, and I've already outlined what went wrong in my earlier 'a 3rd year of paint-on-brush' post... even after that post while I was away, it took me another 9 days to realise I still wasn't doing anything so had misses for the first 8 days of year 4.

Meanwhile Carl did amazingly well last year, so congrats to him for hitting the magic 52 finishes *rapturous applause*

I did take inspiration from Carl's 'easy win' haystacks and prepare a load of my own resin terrain in an attempt to see the year out with a bang, but in the end decided sleep, sanity, and some cool films on TV were preferable so admitted defeat.

So where does that leave me in 2024, well I've managed something every day since missing those first eight days, all that terrain is in progress and hopefully finished in January, I managed to finish building a heap of plastic Vikings ready to prime and paint in February, it could be a good year?

Projects for 2024 (Carl)

 I’ve been prone to skidding about with a lot of diversions in my hobby over recent years. But after a period of ill health I maintained a reasonably consistent painting habit in the last few months of last year. With this in mind I’m going to try to focus my efforts a bit more this year and attempt to complete a number of projects I have in progress.

Number one on the list is my Age of Sigmar Slaves to Darkness 1000 point army. This has been in progress for years and never got to the finish line. Nick and I have aborted two attempts of attending a team event at Warhammer World due to lack of a painted army so I’m determined to get a force complete so it’s ready to go.

Number two on the list is my Lord of the Rings Minas Tirith army. I started this in January 2023 but swiftly got diverted into a dalliance with Horus Heresy. I want to get this force completed so I can get some games in with a painted force. It’s not just useful for Games Workshop’s Battles in Middle Earth but also Osprey’s Rampant series of games.

The third project I want to get finished is my 10mm version of the Lucrum board game. My aim is to recommence attending wargame trade shows and this would help promote Lucrum.

The fourth project is my Horus Heresy Space Marines, these were a diversion last spring and halted diving in as I wanted to ensure I painted what I have before buying further into the collection.

I’ve also got my Tyranid warhammer 40k force to continue building towards 1000 points.

Finally I have a box of works in progress of many different kinds of models that I’ll be dipping in and out of as the whim takes me.

You could be forgiven thinking that’s quite enough to be going on with but I’ve also got the purchase I made in 2023 including loads of Fenris Games resin scenic items. I will also inevitably add to the mountain this year but I am going to try to be more considered in my approach rather than jumping about like a kid in a toy shop. I’m not sure how I’ll get on with this.

So there’s plenty to be going on with, if I manage a decent amount of this I should hit 52 models this year quite easily. But we’ll see how likely that is as the year progresses.

Pendraken (Battescale) 10mm buildings (Carl)

 My first completions of 2024!

These two buildings are part of my ongoing 10mm version of the Lucrum board game. The buildings, along with the haystacks and livestock provide enough scenics to represent farmland terrain objectives in the game.

I’m enjoying working in this size and can see myself using it a lot more in the future.