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.