Wild West Exodus - Outlaws

I wanna be a Cowboy...  Oh my, lets jump on the path of another distraction and a new project.  Derek, from Throne of Angels, suggested we pick something to paint and play at Adepticon this year.  After kicking some ideas over to him, the list came down to either Wild West Exodus or Relic Knights.  Having some stuff already, from the original Kickstarter, I advocated Wild West Exodus.  We agreed to target 750 pts for a small starter force that would be doable (for me) and depending on time we could either increase the size or also throw Relic Knights in at a small point level.  Note, since "agreeing" to 750 pts it would seem to have grown to full blown 1500 pt game...

I advocated for WWX mostly because I already had some models and that should mean not having to buy much, if anything.  Using the Outlaw models I already had also allowed to me to actually do something with a kickstarter (other than put it on the shelf) for the first time!  Since then I have been, albeit unsuccessfully, resisting the urge to buy more and new stuff but let's not dwell on that now.

Outlaws assembled.

The picture above consists of the Outlaws I got from the original Kickstarter.  The multi-part plastic models (hired hands) are tedious.  Each one of them was at least 5 pieces, sometimes more.  The resin models were much easier to deal with, although the alternate Jesse James was not such a great casting.

Slapping some paint on the hired hands.

I went with a strange, for me at least, approach to painting these guys.  Something I had never tried before.  I primed a black base coat, then did a heavy dry brush of grey followed by a light dry brush of white.  Then the colors you see above were applied as washes, trying to take advantage of the highlighting.  I think it worked to some degree, and I managed to get to this point very quickly (I think I was at about 20 mins/figure here).  The next few steps however bogged down  as it required more precision work.  Esp, since I did not use a good/proper order of operations (like the classical "inside-out" approach) to get to this point.

The metallics and light leather blocked in.

Now I've hit the home stretch.  Not terribly happy with the light leather and it "ate" the pre-highlighting (paint was to thick and my previous work being to sloppy), so I had to re-highlight.  At this point, I was hoping the washes would knock things down to where I wanted and also help clean things up.

Post-washes.

Maybe a matter of opinion, but I think the washes panned out the way I hoped.  I considered hitting the light leather with 1-2 more washes to tone them done some more but ultimately decided not to.  Now all that is left is to highlight the armor some and knock the bases out.  I kind of backed myself into a corner at this point though.  The typical darker color for the basing did not seem like such a good idea since the models themselves are kind of dark.  After a few iterations I ended up at this:

Click for a better view, Blogger is butchering the thumbnails.

I not completely happy with this, as I find the bases distracting and in general just find my eyes drawn downward.  But since they are just hired hands (grunts), I called them done.  Maybe down the line I will figure something out and get these fixed up.

Colors used:

• These colors were interchanged on various figures & places:
• Dark Browns:  RMS Blackened Brown
• Blues:  RMS Twilight Blue
• Greys:  RMS Cloudy Grey
• Light Brown (Holsters/Belts/Boots):
• Leather Brown (Base), 2:1 Bronzed Hightlight:Leather Brown (Highlights)
• Bandannas:  RMS Clotted Red
• Rifle/Pistol/Knife:  AP Gun Metal
• Rifle/Pistol/Knife Stocks:  RMS Walnut Brown
• Skin:  RMS Bronzed Highlight
• Cracked Earth:  RMS Tanned Leather
• All - 2-3 applications of thinned AP Strong Tone

Bolt Action - Even More Americans

Still catching up on finished projects.  Here is more Bolt Action Americans.  I'm not sure what I was thinking when I bought these guys, other than "cool, Americans can field 3 MMG teams!"  But, in retrospect I'm not sure I will ever use/field them.  But 9 figures painted is still something to share. 

Might go back and add some static grass to the left one to make it more interesting.

Bolt Action - More Americans

Not a lot to talk about here.  Just adding more American units to my Bolt Action.  The mortar team was painted per my previous infantry recipes.  I will capture how I did the Jeep later, with a group shot of the vehicles I've done.

Funny thing happened during this though.  I realized while I was airbrushing the Jeep I had completely forgotten to paint the actual mortar for the mortar team (I had the entire team finished, except for it).  So while I was cleaning out the airbrush, to prepare to quickly paint the mortar, I bent the crap out of the needle.  Luckily I had a spare, so I slide it in and was amazed by the difference.  It was such a night and day difference, I can't imagine how long I've been fighting the obviously (at least now it's obvious) bent needle.  Anyway, I then proceeded to very effortlessly do the best detail/precision painting I have ever done with my airbrush.  On sandbags.  *sigh*

Damn, those sandbags look good!  Note, this after a wash but before
the weathering pigments covered up most of these awesome sandbags!

More Guild Ball - Masons

Entering the home stretch for my Masons team.  Despite the delay in this post, I did actually get these done in time for the NOVA Open.  And then I decided not the play at the NOVA Open.  I thought this would be the last of them but I recently sourced Veteran Chisel and the dual faction Lucky model.  I need to still paint a ball, of all things.  And a bout of OCD will probably have me finally tackle the original Harmony model I don't like and finally make a goal marker.  Nonetheless, they have been a nice break from all the Bolt Action stuff lately.

Four new members.

This particular batch of models (with the exception of Granite) caused me a lot anxiety, leading me to hold off for a long time before painting them.  I was really worried with Hammer because I had never painted dark skin before and thought I would butcher it.  He turned out pretty good ok though, I think.  I also dreaded the mascots because I had no idea how to paint either one.  While I waited for an intermediate layer of varnish to dry on Granite and Hammer, I decided to throw caution to the wind and just grabbed paints and gave it a try.  I think it worked out well enough.

Here they are with the rest of the team that is completed so far.

Obviously looking at the picture above, I need to go back and repaint the base rims.  Again.  For some reason my black paint is just not taking a liking to those rims.  The mud basing is pretty simple and some point I think I will go back and add some vertical components to them (tufts, rocks, something) but I'm going to wait on that awhile.  I tried tufts with Brick and spent a considerable amount of time trying to undo the damage I caused.  

Anyway, for my records here how I painted them:

• Granite/Hammer - The same as my previous Mason models.  Hammer of course used the Reaper Dark Skin triad.
• Wrecker - Other than the shell, the rest as my previous Masons.
• Shell - RMS Stained Ivory (Shade), RMS Yellowed Bone (Base), RMS Creamy Ivory (Highlight).  Followed by 2-3 applications of thinned AP Strong Tone
• Marbles - No idea what I used on the branch.
• Fur - RMS Bone Shadow (Shade), RMS Aged Bone (Base), RMS Polished Bone (Highlight).  
• Skin - RMS Blackened Brown and I tried to feather/wet blend it into the fur colors.

September/October Recap

It's almost Thanksgiving and I still had not caught up with September & October recaps.  Mostly due to not having much activity gaming wise the past couple of months.  However, I have gotten some hobbying done and got several miniatures fully painted in the past 2 months.  Hopefully I will get these posted up soon.

For both September and October, I only managed to get in 2 games of Guild Ball.  Both of those games were in September, so sadly I have not tried Season 4, yet.  It looks pretty good for the Masons but only time will tell.  I had hoped that Season 4 would streamline some things and reduce some of the inter-dependencies, and in a lot of cases it did but not so much for the Masons.

Also, despite running an escalation league for Konflikt 47 I did not manage to get any games in for the past two months (at the 750pt or 1000pt increments).  As the organizer, I needed to bow out when there were an odd number of players which was the trend for those months.  We ended up wrapping the league up a couple of weeks early to avoid overlapping a couple of major events at the game store.  Since the league was not anything I would call a success, that was more than fine by me.  

Lots of exciting news, IMO, hit toward the end of the October (maybe some of this is technically November).  The minds behind Test of Honour announced a similar game coming out called Mortal Gods: Test of Courage.  Ancient Greeks!  The figures are looking fantastic and should be very similar ruleset to Test of Hounor.  The other exciting tidbit is there seems to be some changes on the horizon for Test of Honour, which the creators taking it back over (or something).  Here is hoping they will break the horrible sales model that the game has suffered under (IMO).  Also, good news for SAGA in that the Book of Battles recently released containing new/revised scenarios usable for all the variations of SAGA.  This was followed up with the announcement that the Age of Magic would be the next expansion, bringing "fantasy" to the SAGA system!  

Coupled with an Adepticon challenge for 2019 and a new Bolt Action league kicking off, looks like my painting queue is going to stay packed.  Very packed.  

Lastly, some personal disheartening hobby news:  My new accountant discovered an egregious error in the book keeping.  While I thought I had managed to stay amazingly on track budget wise, he unearthed the fact that 3-4 months of purchases from early in 2019 had not be logged.  With virtually no time to "repair" the damage before the end of the year, looks like I'm really going to bust my budget for the year.  Of course the devil on my shoulder is shouting "Well, if you are going to break that goal, break it goooooood.  Real good."

Anyway, more soon.  Hopefully...

August Recap

I really should have written this before the NOVA Open, everything is a bit fuzzy now.  Anyway, fairly decent month of gaming for August.  As part of running the Konflikt 47 league, I managed to play two games at the monthly point level of 500 pts.  I also showed a new player Bolt Action with a small 500 pt game.

The rest of the month was pretty much consumed with painting.  From recent posts, you can see I knocked out a Firefly Jump Infantry squad for Konflikt 47, 2 new cars for Gaslands and a few Guild Ball Mason models.  I technically achieved my goals of having Guild Ball and Konflikt painted up for the NOVA Open, but with very limited selections for both.  Still, a win is a win.

Moving on to the NOVA Open, I'll go ahead and include that in this post while it is fresh in my mind.  Returning to the NOVA Open after a multi-year absence was pretty good.  It was really good to see many familiar faces and spend time with some great people.

Thursday was a pretty slow day for me.  I was registered to play in the Konflikt 47 tournament but multiple factors convinced me to bail on it.  I spent most of the day just wondering around and catching up with people.  For my taste and interest, the vendor hall did not offer much of a distraction and I ended the convention only spending $40 on the new Warlord US Infantry box (different sculpts that, hopefully, will help me get over the hump of not wanting to paint any more infantry units).  Mostly though, I just harassed my buddy John from the 40k Hobby blog.  This included Dave Taylor and I jumping into the photo shoot for John's amazing titan that was part of the charity auction.

Shamelessly stolen photo.

Friday I was scheduled for a Falconer's flight for Guild Ball, but again I let multiple factors convince me to bail on it.  Mostly because I am not sure I completely like Guild Ball and did not want to suffer through multiple rounds of it.  Instead, John's buddy Brian left a beautiful 4x4 terrain board in the dedicated hobby area that only had basic priming done to it.  He had hoped to have it completely finished by Sunday for a game, so John and I decided to surprise him while he was downstairs playing 30k.

On the left is basically what we started with, the right is
what we got done Friday in about 6 hours.

While we did have an airbrush to paint the crashed ship, our other
"tools" were pretty limited.

Aside from the ship and the scattered structures, this was
pretty much the definition of "finger" painting.

We rounded out Friday night with Brian buying us an awesome dinner for all of our work.  Later we managed to find a secluded corner of the hotel bar and were joined by several more awesome people.

Saturday saw the arrival of my wife and kids early that morning (their Friday night flight having been cancelled).  I met them at the nearby airport and helped them get the rental car loaded up and squared away, before being dropped back off at the hotel for my first event I would actually attend:  A seminar by Vince Venturella.  I've never taken a class with Vince but turns out he does a really nice job with his classes and, much like his "Hobby Cheating" series on YouTube, focused very precisely on the seminar topic of Battle Damage.  Having taken other vehicle based weathering classes this class was a very good compliment (for me) focusing on smaller scale damage (such as space marines).  Vince does a great job with his classes and I'm glad I took this one.

Saturday night was a Wrath of Kings narrative event I had signed up for.  It was 3 vs 3 player game, having the Hadross defending their home from a multi-faction invasion hell bent on stealing Hadross's latest genetic manipulation feat.  I played as one of the 3 Hadross players who successfully fended off werewolves, celestial animals, and mask wearing demon women.

Another shameless stolen photo.

It was a fun game on a beautiful board.  The scenario ended up being a little lopsided for the other team, even as we made adjustments on the fly to let them bring reinforcements back on.  Still though, I think everyone ended up having a good time.  Along with my 2 teammates, I walked away with WoK two player starter box.  The event reminded me of just how great of a game Wrath of Kings is,  to bad it appears CMON is letting it atrophy and die a slow death.  I wrapped up the evening talking with Todd, from the weekly hobby hangout, while he waited for his dinner and ate.

That pretty much wrapped up the NOVA Open for me.  While I did not fly back till late Monday afternoon, the conclusion of Saturday night had me back on family duty.  Sunday morning we met our close friends and their kids at the national zoo and had fun catching up.  That night, I just hung out with Alex while the girls went to the spa.

Anyway, that's it with August and with the NOVA Open behind me time to move on to:  more K47 stuff, more BA stuff, wrapping odds-n-ends up, and new projects.

Returning to Guild Ball - Masons

Continuing to resurrect old projects, I decided I needed to finish painting my Guild Ball Masons team since I've been playing it a bit lately.  Plus, I'm signed up for an event at the NOVA Open so I wanted to have them wrapped up for that.  Here is where I left off 2 years (oh my) ago:

I did finally do the basing on these guys.  Recently...

Wow, that was awhile ago.  And look, all boys...  Not sure that was a conscience decision or not.  One thing I do remember though is those models seemed to have taken me forever.  By contrast, these seemed to fly by at a pretty decent pace (for me):

They didn't really turn out the way I hoped.  Honour (middle) and Harmony (right) experienced some pretty bad texture on the facial skin (not really visible in these photos).  And I happened to save that part for last!  Anyway, I was not going to strip everything down just to try it again, so I pretty much just decided to accept it and didn't put in a lot more work after that.  Just want some respectable on the tabletop and at tabletop distances.  Speaking of which, I still don't feel like I'm pushing my contrast far enough.  *sigh*

These are same colors I used on that original batch, so for my reference they are:  Masons Basecoat, Shade, and Highlight.  The hair was done differently than the first batch, but I didn't take notes.  From memory though:

• Chisel (left):  Very dark dark blue base, highlighted first pass with Vallejo Panzer Aces Dark Rubber, second pass with Light Rubber.  Shadows with VMC Black.
• Honour (middle):  Pretty much RMS Blonde Triad
• Harmony (right):  Very similar to Brick from the first batch, although a stronger highlight was added with something...

While doing the basing and sealing for these, I actually knocked out Marbles but I'll post that up with next group:  Wrecker, Granite, Hammer.

Vehicular Combat - Resurrecting the Forgotten

Once upon I time, I had embarked on a special project to build some vehicles for some (previously unidentified) vehicular combat game.  You can find the beginnings of that project and the first completed car build here.  Recently Gaslands has gained a bit of traction locally, so I've dusted this abandoned project off (I never got around to finishing the 3 other cars shown/mentioned in that post).

Two new cars join the original (left most)

The El Camino on the left got updated with some weathering powders while I was doing that work on the 2 new cars.  Pretty happy with how these turned out.  I regretted doing a chop top on the taxi (middle) for the longest time.  It really turned into a nightmare, but it finally came together and I'm happy with it (other than the window plates on the taxi).  I also dreaded the painting the white on the old school ambulance, but I think it turned out ok.  Just one more car to do to finish leg 1 on the grander project.  With Gaslands being a pretty good ruleset, maybe I can get motivated to to finish this leg up and tackle the next leg.  Anyway, here are more shots of the new cars:

Paints used on the Taxi:

• RMS Marigold Yellow (Shade), RMS Sunlight Yellow (Base), RMS Lemon Yellow (Highlight)
• Who knows what for the steel plates.
• Misc weathering stuff.

Paints used on the Ambulance:

• RMS Creamy Ivory (Shade), RMS Creamy Ivory + VMA White 1:1 (Base), VMA White (Highlight with excessive overspray)
• Bars and plates, no idea
• The red was just some random red I grabbed, should have probably been a brighter red...
• Misc weather stuff.

Konflikt 47 - American Firefly Jump Infantry

Leveraging off my existing Bolt Action American forces allowed me to jump straight to some of the "toys" that K47 introduces.  Since I knew even my BA American's were short on infantry squads (I just haven't had a desire to paint up more), I knew I needed my first K47 project to be an infantry squad and the Firefly Jump Infantry were the obvious choice (to me at least).  Truth be told, I actually did start first on some walkers before I realized that they were not what I should be focusing on.

Anyway, here they are:

Photo is a little washed out.

Not completely satisfied, but I called them done.  After all, I have another box of these guys.  I like these models and they were pretty fun to paint.  Except for the webbing, those details are not very pronounced and having to go over them 2-3 times (my color choice does not have the best single pass coverage) was excruciating.  Maybe hard to tell from the photo but the glow on the jet packs also did not turn out as well as I had hoped.  Still, good enough to move on, except some additional matte coat is needed in a few spots.

I painted these very similar to my American Bolt action infantry.  Instead of the RMS Worn Olive and RMS Faded Khaki (for the pants and jacket respectively), I used RMS Olive Drab instead for the jump suits.  I also limited the dust/mud weathering to just the boots given their nature on the battlefield and also because the knee pads already provide some visual interest in that area of the figures.

July Recap

Another good month of gaming goodness.  I kicked off July with a game of Gaslands at the local tap room.  We had two tables going with incredible tables by Darren over at Broken Sword Studios.

Table 1 is simply stunning.

Table 2 is not shabby either.

Both tables played Death Race with 5 players per table (a really great turn out).  Everyone had a really great time, although I believe both games were called not long after cars finally got past the first gate.  The game bogs down a bit in death race, esp with that many players.  Plus pretty much everyone was new to the game.  A week or two later, I got in another game of Gaslands where we played the zombie scenario, again with 5 players.  Definitely a much better scenario for that many players but it does still take a while to play.  All that being said, the abstractions of the game are simply amazing.  For me, it gives just the right balance of simulation and simplification.  Not only can I not wait to play again, I can't wait to see what Mike Hutchinson does for his next game.

With the Bolt Action league having concluded, we have transitioned to open play and gearing up for a short Konflikt '47 escalation league.  Having shown up one day to work on Konflikt league rules, I got pulled into playing Bolt Action with a perspective player.  I borrowed a 1250 pt Finnish tournament list (he wanted the "full" experience) and showed him the ropes.  He was sold, so we added another to our ranks.  I also ran another person through a 500 pt Konflikt game to acquaint her with the rules and to sate her excitement for the upcoming league.

Rounding things out, I squeezed a game of Guild Ball in on the very last day of July.  I really want to love Guild Ball, but I'm just not sold.  It definitely is not a bad game, although I think it should be "quicker."  It's just that the game requires very good knowledge of your opponents models and requires/rewards excessive pre-measuring.  Still, I will continue to give it a go a bit longer and finish up painting the models I have.

That pretty much rounds out July.  I made some really good progress on painting and I will post that up soon.  I'm not sure I will make either of my painting goals for the NOVA Open but I'm not sure the two events I am painting for are even going to happen due to low registration numbers.  We'll see.  Also August sees the kick off of two new leagues:  the Konflikt '47 league I'm running and a Gaslands league.  Feast or famine.  lol

June Recap

Despite my yearly family vacation eating up two of my weekends during June, I did manage to get respectable amount of games in as well as getting a full 1000 pts painted in time for the Bolt Action D-Day game (albeit a sub-optimal 1000 pts).  I had two normal games of Bolt Action, at 1000 pts, for the month.  In addition, I was one of 5 allied players that participated in the D-Day game.  Unfortunately, we had 7 axis players show up.  The reality is that we would probably have needed 4x the numbers as the Axis team.

Beautiful beach landing area for D-Day.

The nearby town, center board.

The nearby rural area.

Via roll-off, I ended up being the top allied player coming in at 8th place.  In case you have already forgotten, there were 7 axis players...  It was not a good day for the allies.

In other gaming news, it turned out that the Guild Ball group on the other side of town that I had never been able to make it out to had mostly fallen apart.  In an effort to rebuild the community, the organizer moved it over to my side of town at Lucky Dice Cafe and changed the night to one that I happen to be available for (at least for the summer).  So I jumped in on that twice in June, the first time just playing a small 4v4 to shake the dust off and introduce a new guy to the game.  The second game was a full game against an experienced and returning player.  I still want to really like this game but I'm just not sure about the game length and the intimate knowledge of your opponents team that is really required.  Ok, it is not really "required" but I don't respond well when I am caught off guard by something I flat out did not know my opponents guy could do, it doesn't make for a good play experience for me and can cause an entire turn of Guild Ball to collapse.  Anyway, I'll keep trying to give it a go as long as my schedule permits.

While on vacation, I also had a chance to duck into Mrytle Beach Games, which was a nice little game store.  They had a good selection of board games and as well as your typical Magic the Gathering selection/support.  They had a smattering of Warmachine, Guild Ball and Reaper Bones miniatures as well as selection of hobby supplies.  Nice clean store and bit spacious.  I don't know the history of the place (new?) but it did seem like they were still in the process of figuring out how to utilize their space.  I think I will definitely swing by there again next year to see how it is coming along.

Lastly, right before my vacation I linked up with a local guy I had spotted on facebook that was doing incredible stuff for Gaslands.  I tied him in with some others I knew were interested, a bingo they all hit the ground running.  And I subsequently missed 2 games of Gaslands while I was on vacation!  I did eventually get a game in but technically that was in July, so more on that next month.

Bolt Action - Americans

Mentioned in previous posts, I jumped in on a Bolt Action escalation league a few months ago.  The scale (as in the number of figures) and subject matter (WW2) is not the most appealing to me but I really wanted to support some kind of miniature league at Huntsville's new gaming store, Lucky Dice Cafe.  Bolt Action was the first opportunity and I decided to roll with it.  In retrospect, I am really glad I did because it has turned out very well and has been a lot of fun.

Rolling through the first month, I left myself in a bit of bind for trying to get my painting points in for the month.  I managed to get 250 pts of veterans assembled very quickly so I could play but before I knew it I only had one week left to paint them.  So a very interesting challenge presented itself to me:  14 figures in 7 days, something I have never even come close to accomplishing.

The first batch, 14 figs in 7 days.

I'm not really the biggest fan of Warlord's miniatures, so this left me a lot of freedom to really try to push my painting speed since I was not overly concerned how good the final product looked.  I just wanted them painted.  It also forced me to really see how much "messiness" Army Painter's strong tone was could cover up.  Overall, I'm pretty satisfied with the results given the time investment.  The figures above eventually had some weathering powder applied to the base to shift the color a little bit.  I also placed the weathering powder randomly to knees and elbows, as well as some other areas that "seemed" to make sense.  All in all it was pretty interesting exercise but was a bit of painful, especially since my sweet spot for batch painting to be limited to just 3 figures!  

I also tracked the actual hours for the figures above.  All said, from not primed to sealed each model came in at about 2 hours.  I was really hoping for a sub 1 hour mark.

Between the initial 250 pt mark for the league and the 1000 pt mark for the D-Day game, I really only managed to paint my Chaffee light tank and get some more guys assembled.  This caused me to not get my painting points for the league for a couple of months.

I may have over chipped it.

While I did not completely rectify the previous mistake of waiting till the last minute, I did at least realize more than week before I needed to knock out another significant batch of models.  And my Greyhound scout car.  So I didn't have 14 models to paint this time, I had 19!  Plus the Greyhound!  And only 2 weeks to do so.

Ugh, so many!

We'll skip an up close shot of the Greyhound as I am not pleased with it currently.  Like the Chaffee, it is also not completely "done."  I'll eventually post some stuff up for them when I wrap them up.

Most interestingly, here I am at basically the half way point of the year and I've painted up 33 Bolt Action infantry figures.  Combine that with the Menoth models I painted for Company of Iron and I'm at 43.  My total for all of last year was just 36, so that has me feeling pretty good.  That is until I  think about all the other projects in the queue...

Anyway, the paints used for these guys:

• Pants:  RMS Worn Olive (Base); No highlights
• Jacket:  RMS Faded Khaki (Base); 1:1 RMS Faded Khaki:Bronzed Highlight (Highlight)
• Webbing:  RMS Terran Khaki (Base); RMS Kahki Highlight (Highlight)
• Rifle-Steel:  1:1 RMS Pure Black:AP Gun Metal (Base); AP Shinning Silver (Highlight)
• Rifle-Stock:  RMS Blackened Brown (Base); RMS Intense Brown (Highlight)
• Skin:  
• Batch 1:  RMS Bronzed Highlight (Base)
• Batch 2:  RMS Bronzed Skin (Base)
• Helmet:  RMS Olive Green (Base); 1:1 RMS Olive Green:RMS Pale Olive
• All shading was with diluted AP Strong Tone all over the model, some wiped away on highlight areas of the pants.  A second application was done (after the first dried) in select/deeper areas.

Overall, pretty happy with how they turned out.  The highlight's on the helmets are sometimes really off and also do not transition well but I'll try to correct that on subsequent figures.  I should have been more careful in applying the Strong Tone wash.  But, they are done.  Eventually I will need to add my MMG teams and 1-2 squads to have a more robust 1000 pt list but I can at least move on to other things now and revisit this at a more relaxed pace.

March/April/May Recap

Ok, so I haven't done a good job of regular posts on the blog, let alone getting caught up on things I wanted to post or have meant to post.  On all fronts, things have just been busy but luckily that includes hobby stuff and managing to play games!

March - I'm a bit fuzzy, but I think I managed to get 3 games of Bolt Action in for the month for the escalation league.  Smaller games, only 350 pts, but as I recall them they were very enjoyable.  I also got several games of different things in at Adepticon, along with a few seminars.  More on Adepticon at the end.

April - The Bolt Action escalation league jumped up 500 pts for this month and I got 3 games in.  As a point sink (and out of fear my opponents would do the same) I managed to sneak a light tank into the list.  Again all the games were very good, even the game when I managed to get screwed by any unit having just a single pin on it, despite the units all be veteran.  I also got in a game of Company of Iron, with Mike.  You can find Mike's write up here.  I'm not quite sold on the game yet but I willing to give it another go or two.

May - Ah, my typical hell month because almost all the birthdays in my family are in May and that coupled with the end of the school year chaos, I only managed to get one game of Bolt Action.  I also queued up a bunch of new figures to fill my list out to a 1000 pts for the June D-Day game and got some paint on my light tank and greyhound scout car.

As for Adepticon, it was a great convention as usual.  As usual, I mostly played one-off participation games where the materials were provided and along with a couple of demos.  This included:

• A Jetbike race using some modified Deadzone rules which turned out to be pretty fun.
• A Mecha arena pit fight game using modified Deadzone rules.  This one did not turn out so great since it got dumped into someone's lap unexpectedly and he was not familiar with the modifications.  I basically ended up with a Mecha that was configured in a way that couldn't damage other mechs.  Afterwards I think he managed to get it sorted out for the next batch of players and kudos to him for trying to press through as best he could.
• A 3 round mini-tournament of Eden for beginners.  They did a really great job of introducing new concepts every round and having plenty of people to help out (I think there were at least 3 of them for the 8-10 of us playing).  The game seems a lot of fun and apparently plays out very well with more than 2 players, which is nice.  I may have picked up a starter...
• Played a Shadows of Brimstone custom scenario which was really great and a lot of fun.  We lost the boss fight horribly but it was still a lot of fun.  The game mechanics can certainly end up stacking the odds against you though.
• Having re-read through the rules before the convention, I decided to skip out on my game of Fistful of Lead.  Not that the rules are bad, but they just didn't seem that interesting.  Which was why I did not back the kickstarter for their Sci-Fi ruleset.  
• And then my hobby seminars.  They were good but I'm strongly considering forgoing them in the future.  Between the high costs, poor lighting conditions and other factors, I'm just not sure it is a good investment for me.  In fact, I really wonder if it would be a better investment to just hang out in the painter's lounge working on stuff with fellow painters.  We'll see.
• I've also got a great demo of SAGA and have been really itching for it since.  All my other projects have taken priority though and so far I have "behaved."

Rounding all that out, in this period of 3 months, I've gone and double the number of kickstarters I backed in 2017.  Of course, that was only 1 so it is not that bad.  I succumbed to the Godtear kickstarter and I also had to go in on Dave Taylor's book.

Well, that sort of gets me caught up.  Next I will hopefully get some pics of my bolt action guys up along with my notes on how I painted them (before I loose them).  I've still got a lot on my plate to be ready for the NOVA Open though, so we'll see...

January/February Recap

Ok, so I am a little behind on posting up to the blog.  Things have been pretty busy this year (already) on all fronts:  family, hobby and work.  Before we recap Jan & Feb (combined since I failed to even get a January recap up), let me remind myself about some missing blog posts I need to get up:

• Final Thoughts of 2017 Hobby Audit
• Hobby Goals for 2018
• Company of Iron Hobbying
• Bolt Action Hobbying
• Bolt Action Proxy Hobbying

Alright, with that done and spoiling a few things, let's jump to what has been keeping me so busy (on the hobby front) the past 2 months.  The main item that kept me busy during January was the Tale of Three (Four, nope Three) Gamers challenge for Company of Iron.  I posted a bit up about this challenge a few weeks ago, here and have made a few updates directly to Mike that he has posted on his blog Mini Mayhem.  I did not get my unit painted up by the Jan deadline and it has dragged through most of Feb (yes, I might not make Feb either).

This is partly due to some burn out (I pushed really hard at the end of Jan to try make my painting goal for Company of Iron) and partly due to stumbling upon a Bolt Action escalation league at our new local store, Lucky Dice Cafe.  The league had a big mega battle (2500+ pts per side) at the end of Jan to launch the league.  With the Company of Iron challenge hanging over me (along with my failure of the Jan goal) I really did not want to take on more projects.  But, I really wanted to be involved in something with the new store and to expand beyond my limited play opportunities.  Given there were already 8 people signed up for the league, I went for it.

Which meant, I need to assemble my first 250 pts by the start of the league which was only a week later and to eventually get them painted up by the end of Feb.  Both of which I did, so some great hobby progress was accomplished, although I am still behind on my other challenge. 

Anyway, to compliment the Bolt Action hobby time, I've also managed to get 4 games of BA between Jan and Feb.  Granted, the first was just a couple of turns of a partial force of Germans for the league kickoff game and the 3 other games have been at the 250 pts level for this month's league.  Still, its been good to get out a play and to see something like this going on at the new game store.  I even believe over the month of Feb we saw the league grow to 14 players.  Maybe some of those people can be converted to Konflikt 47 players...

2017 Hobby Audit (Spending Analysis) Part 3/4

Well apparently the account does not like the beatings.  He ran the numbers again and things did not turn out quite as well as I had thought.  Still there are improvements, mostly.  Off the top of my head, the same caveats as previous years still apply.

Anyway, the spending breakdown:

Modelling Supplies:  15%
Painting Supplies:  19%
Gaming Supplies:  11%
Terrain Supplies:  8%
Miniatures:  42%
Scale:  1%










Other views: 
How much of the total spending was on kickstarters:  <1%
How much at conventions:  25%
How much FLGS:  Kinda lost track and don't feel up to backing it out.  Not significant though.
How much toward things that are getting to the table: 24%

The account swears by his numbers and it turns out my initial estimate of only going over budget by 5% was wrong.  He says it is more like 17%.  So, not as great as I had hoped but still a reduction from last years 23% over budget numbers.  Once again (making 2 years in a row) modelling and painting supplies took a pretty major hit with the purchase of my second hobby lamp (this one for my airbrush area).  It also looks like I got a little carried away at Adepticon.  But there was a major shift on kickstarters, getting it down to "noise" level! 

In truth, the money spent toward things getting to the table may be optimistic, since we have already seen how many hobby games I can manage to get.  They are all things that are pretty solid for the local group, so I am going to stand behind those numbers for now.

Explanation of categories, if curious:
Modelling Supplies - Includes items for assembling, miniature storage, etc
Painting Supplies - Includes paints, brushes, etc
Gaming Supplies - Need it to play the game, or it helps.  Includes tokens, cards, rules, etc.
Terrain Supplies - Anything related to terrain or the making of terrain
General Hobby - Things not related specifically to a particular aspect, like gaming/hobby magazines
Miniatures - Take a guess
Board Games - No hiding miniatures here!  Imperial Assault goes under Miniatures.
RPGS - Bet you can guess this one too.
Scale - Scale models/Non-gaming models

Up next, final thoughts.

Tale of Four Gamers - Company of Iron, My Week 1

So, taking a break from my 2017 Hobby Audit, I've decided to touch on and provide a week one update of something I'm involved in for 2018.  My buddy Mike over at Mini Mayhem, along with Derek at Throne of Angels have dragged me into a Tale of Four Gamers.  Mike is documenting the overall effort and what not on his blog, so if you are interested check it out.  As we intend to play at Adepticon, this will count as my "paint something for Adepticon" goal.

So for this first month of the Tale, I foolishly decided to go for what will be the only unit in my force:  Protectorate Exemplar Errants.  Tackling these guys first would hopefully give me plenty of breathing room to work the remaining force in parallel to other projects I would like to be working on.  So, straight off the bat on January 1st I jumped in.  And I jumped in the deep end.  I figured by the end of the first week, I would have everything assembled, cleaned, primed and the white completed.  And this is where I got:

They may look dangerous but just get out of their peripheral vision,
they can't turn their heads side to side.

Yep, just barely got to the assembled and cleaned (debatable) state.  And that alone took a herculean effort.  There are a lot of things I want to "say" about these models but they are not very nice words or comments.  I just can't resist at least one comment though:

Nice, "nubs" for slotting into the figure!

See those 2 red circles, indicating the "nubs" to be slotted?  Look at the figure and tell me where to slot them?  I kinda figured out, albeit to late, that the scabbard one is "supposed" to fit on the belt right behind the left thigh armor.  And that was really the problem with these figures, a lot of "supposed to's".  In fact, in a fit of rage and desperation let's look at what did not get attached:

Hmm, yeah we don't have time for this BS.

Yes, some are spare/extra parts but most are not.  This is a very dysfunctional group of soldiers.  Four have decided to drop their shields and pull their crossbows.  While the other six thought it was a better tactical choice to drop their crossbows and pull their sword and shields.  Who is in charge of this chickenshit outfit!?  Oh wait, I guess that is technically me...

The best part, I am thoroughly convinced that these guys will only perform if painted to the highest standards humanly possible.  Otherwise, they will just roll over and somehow die during deployment.  I'm sooo looking forward to the quality time I get to spend with these a-holes.

2017 Hobby Audit (Goals Failed) Part 2/4

Let's just jump right in, the 2017 Hobby Goal failures:

Specific Goals:

• "Weeks having played miniature games > 12"
• Sadly I ended the year with only 8 weeks where I actually played a miniature's game.  Lots of real life conflicts interfering with the bi-weekly game days coupled with the groups obsession with Frost Grave (and my disinterest in Frost Grave) limited my ability to get many games in.  Needless to say, this is trending in the WRONG direction.
• "Weeks having played board or role-playing games > 20"
• I am dumbfounded that this is such a hard goal for me but I ended the year with only 8 weeks where I played a board game (most of which were with my daughter).  There is a weekly Wednesday lunch group at work that plays board games.  The problem is, I'm that hard pressed to get my hours in at work with 2 kids now.  That being said, my daughter has managed to help me get a few games in.
• "Read more books => 12"
• Ah, this is embarrassing.  I read no books this year.  I just never really found myself with the free time to read.  I even tried audio books but there is an adjustment period, IMO, with them that I just never managed to get past.  The baby certainly did not help this, and usually when I found myself with enough free and quiet time to do this, I gravitated to my hobby desk.
• "Paint something for CMON Expo"
• Well, since I decided fairly early not to go to CMON Expo I did not bother to paint something up.  Honestly, the "gap" between Adepticon and CMON make this a tight deadline for me, compounded by usually deciding not to go.
• "Painting something for NOVA Open"
• Well, since I decided fairly early on that I probably would not make the NOVA Open I did not bother to paint something up.  Regardless, I should have still painted up my Blood Bowl team so that I can have it ready to play Stu if I ever make it back there.
• "Paint up 1 (of my many) Dungeon Crawl type games."
• Well, I gave this one a shot with Tail Feathers but it just did not help that I enjoyed the project.  Granted, I think I will enjoy playing Tail Feathers with my daughter.  I just don't enjoy painting these models up, so I got distracted every chance I could.  I finished the year with 2 birds, 5 bird riders and 1 solo still left to do.  

General Goals:

• Oh the infamous "Don't buy more miniatures than you paint."
• Nope, did not happen.  Sadly 77 models bought is probably at the lowest I have every been but I only painted about 36 models.  Still, compared to years past this is a pretty big improvement.  Also, keeping this goal in mind waved me off of a lot of purchases that I do not regret.

Overall, given the goals that I did achieve, I don't think it is to bad.  Other than reading no books for the year.  Ugh.  Yes, I certainly intended to get more done for the year but I was also dealing with a newborn.  Next time, my 2017 spending analysis.  

2017 Hobby Audit (Goals Achieved) Part 1/4

So before I get to sorting out my hobby goals for the New Year, I always like to take a look at my hobby "performance" for the year just ending.  You can find the original post of my 2017 hobby goals here.  As the name of the post implies, I'm starting with the goals achieved:

Specific Goals:

• "Weeks having painted/assembled/hobby'd > 30"
• I do not have an exact count, because it has become so frequent/normal that it does not register that often.  I can only imagine a couple of weeks were I did not do any hobbying whatsoever.  So I am going to unilateral say it was about 45 weeks that I "hobby'd", so goal achieved.
• "Paint something for Adepticon"
• While I intended to convert and paint more than one Hot Wheels model for a vehicular combat game, technically I only needed one for my planned events at Adepticon.  You can see it here.
• "Start my Super Secret Modelling/Painting project"
• Oh boy, I cheated because this project was my vehicular combat project.  There is an over arching theme to the project, the car above being one of the first.  Yeah, I should have done more than one by now but I'm throwing myself a bone.  Funny though, it may have been another project that I have not shown off on the blog, yet.  I can't remember but I have started that one too, so either way it is a win!
• "Stay within budget"
• The early reporting from the account says I was only 5% over budget.  He was beaten until he promised to re-crunch the numbers, but needless to say I am going to count this as a win because 5% is not bad.  At least its not bad for me...  You should see the numbers for 2013/2014.  Oh my...

General Goals:

• "Reign in spending"  
• This spans a little beyond just budget in that it covers "what" exactly I am buying and why.  See the original 2017 Goals post for more details.  Overall I did a bit better in this regard, with only a few lapses, and I am happy with how it turned out.  I went a little off the rails at Adepticon and I may have gone off the rails with the Fallout Minis Game pre-order, but that would be it.  I'm giving myself a thumbs up on this.
• "Less kickstarters"
• Oh hell, I knocked this one out of the park!  I only backed one kickstarter this entire year!  Granted, I backed it because I really wanted to support the person's effort and not so much with the intent to play the game.  But still...
• "Paint more, including finishing some of my incomplete but started painting projects"
• Ok, I did paint more this year.  Approximately 36 models (yes, it is sad that is more but it is still more!).  Oddly though, I never worked on my incomplete but started projects.  Hmmm.
• "Find my painting 'center'"
• I think I have actually come close to this.  I'm starting to approach a speed with a corresponding result, that I think I am happy with for a tabletop quality.  Yes, there are still things I need to do better, or learn how to do period, but I think by the end of the year I was achieving a pretty good rate.

Overall, I am really happy with the 2017 goals I achieved.  A little less so with the goals that, I now realize, I failed (next post).  Ugh, some of them make me feel a bit embarrassed...  We will cover that next time.

December Recap

As expected the holidays did not play very well hobby related items.  I did manage to get a bit of hobbying done by making some progress on the birds for Tail Feathers.  I will try to get those posted up soon, but alas I will be short of my goal (to paint up the whole box set) by the 5 corresponding bird riders and 1 solo character.  I came close and the hobby retrospective for the year is actually looking pretty good, well except for games played.

I did not manage to get many games played for December.  In fact, all I did manage was a batch of games on Christmas, all games I had bought for my daughter from Christmas and played with her:  Q-bitz, Battle Kittens and Purrlock Holmes (can you tell she's a bit obsessed with cats?).

Anyway, I will start to post up the hobby retrospective/analysis and 2018 goals over the next week or so.  Have to compile a bit of data and go back to see exactly what my goals were.  LOL.

Oh, yeah there was some nice/exciting loot to be had for the month:  In addition to some choice Christmas gifts was the arrival of Mythic Battles Pantheon in the form of 2 large coffin boxes.

Happy New Year.