All posts by Gimgamgoo

Work Strikes Back

Deadzone, Paint Table

I’ve hardly had time to do any painting or work on minis for weeks now. Last night I did get chance to sit down in front of the TV and build some figures though. I built up 3 boxes of Deadzone figures. All Forgefathers. The Forgeguard booster, the Brokkr booster and the Support booster. That gave me all the figures from the card set except for the Warpath Huscarl figure and the Iron Ancestor.

I’ve decided to go with the same orange colour for the Brokkrs that mantic went with, but to give a good complimentary colour to them, I went with a bright blue armour for the Forgeguard. This should fit nicely with my other Deadzone as the Plague are primarily pink/brown/black combo, then Enforcers are Red/grey and the marauders will be brown/Black/Green. It means on the game board, the figures will be easily identifiable.

Anyway, all I’ve managed so far was base coat spraying them. I have the smaller Frag-ram and one forgeguard being painted for a test so they’re not in the photo.

They’ll get finished one day….

Mummies

Kings of War, Paint Table,

I decided to give myself a Sunday afternoon off working and needed a quick painting win. What better way than a batch of 10 Mummies that need very little work to look half decent on the gaming table.

I’d wanted Mantic’s Undead Mummies, but they seem to have been out of stock and vanished from their website, so I finally found some models at a decent price. Check out Thebattleforge.

Their Mummies looked pretty decent – even if they were on oldish looking metal bases. Plastic bases were provided with them though. The models came clean of flash, with next to zero in the way of mold lines. A soapy wash and 3 arms to glue together and they were ready for an undercoat.

I’ll show the pics below of the models in their raw state, undercoated, 2 ink test subjects, then with a bone and white drybrush. All pretty easy. In fact there was more drying time needed than painting. Quick win. A unit on the table.

Unpainted models.

Undercoated with Army Painted Skeleton bone spray.

2 ink test subjects. One with GW’s Agrax Earthshade. The other with Armypainters Strong tone. I couldn’t decide which to use so in the end, did 5 mummies with one and 5 with the other for a slight variation in colour.

Inked and ready to drybrush. The 2 test subjects seemed to work ok.

Drybrushed and ready to be based. Magnets attached and the Mummies hold securely on the movement tray.

Finished unit. A quick win for painting in the spare couple of hours I had.

The start of 2015..

Kings of War,

Starting the first day of the new year not hung over was a first in over 20 years. Getting up at an early hour and painting while the rest of the family slept in was also rather novel.

I’ve managed to paint the last 5 old metal Black Orcs I had to make a unit of 20. These will count as my Orc Morax regiment in Kings of War. I’ve also made a few spare magnetic movement trays and put 10 old GW plastic mono-pose orcs that were painted together that can count as an Orc Ax troop. Not a great deal of painting I suppose, but it feels like I’ve gained 2 more complete units for the Orc army.

I’ve also decided to keep track of models painted vs models bought. Currently I’m winning 5-0. 🙂

Pics below:

Marauder Guntrack Pt 2

Deadzone, Kings of War, , ,

I thought I’d get more chance to paint over the Christmas break. No such luck. The Deadzone Marauder Guntrack I started on has had an hour or so painting time. I still haven’t managed to even start on the driver or loader. Hopefully, there’s two pics below showing its two different gun systems.

I did however get a set of 10 Mantic wraiths for Christmas. I’ve put them together, built a movement tray for them. Drilled magnets into their bases and discovered just how tough restic is (even to a Bosch drill). I’ve always wanted to try one of those Lord of the Rings Undead army style paint jobs that were the in thing for a while, but I’ve never had any figures to try this out on. So on the wraiths, I decided to go with the ghostly look. I know they look knocked up quickly, but it allowed me to try out a different paint style. From bagged bits in a box to as they are in the photo below, they still probably took the best part of 4 or 5 hours for the unit.

Up next are 3 more Mantic werewolves I got for Christmas… Now if only I could remember the colour mixes I used on the last three I painted. Typical.

Marauder Guntrack

Deadzone, Paint Table,

Work’s been a nightmare recently. 60-70 hours a week for the past few weeks.
It’s meant I’ve had very little chance to do anything other than the 3 KoW werewolves I painted quickly and a few movement trays sorted.

Deadzone seems to have been on the backburners, but the other day, my wife got me a Marauder Guntrack for my birthday so I decided to play around building it. 🙂
I wanted both gun options – as I always like to do with models. The easiest option here seemed to be crafting the turret base with plasticard.

So, the pic below shows how I crafted a piece so both gun turrets fit – and are magnetised. The driver has also had magnets drilled in so he can be removed. Now the thing will fit nicely into the space I had in my carry case.
Hopefully I’ll get it painted up over the Christmas holidays. In the photo, I hadn’t even sorted out the mold lines.

Werewolves

Kings of War,

My first Mantic fantasy additions to my Undead army arrived. Like an excited kid, I built them straight away and painted them when the glue had dried. So, I guess they’re a tad rushed – but they fit in with the army well. The bases were done “old school” to match the stuff I painted 15 years ago. Nothing fancy like tufts. Just plan old painted sand with flock.

The photo’s are a little shiny. I think I need another coat of matte varnish. I must admit, I’m in the habit of spraying all figures with Halfords clear car lacquer. Very glossy and very heavy duty. It comes from playing games where individual models are handled a lot and it makes them nuke proof. I guess with fantasy figures it’s less necessary as they’re on movement trays, but it’s force of habit now. A coat or 2 of matte varnish afterwards helps remove the shine.

Changing the menus

Rants

Blimey. I didn’t think that would be such a pain. 😦

I decided to try and add sub-menus to this blog so it would be easier to divide up a little. It took a little longer than I thought, but I’ve managed to sort out a sub-menu system to put both my Deadzone and Kings of War pages into.

I finally decided I’d purchased my last Games Workshop model. I’ll complain more about the reasons why in another post when I feel the urge to get angry. At the moment I’m not going to, because I’ve discovered a far better game than Warhammer Fantasy, a game by Mantic called “Kings of War”. So, it’s time to dust off my old fantasy figures, sort them out to fit Kings of War and give them all a new lease of life. So you have a little perspective, I actually bought my first copy of Warhammer Fantasy Battle in 1984 with some Christmas cash I had. The rather tattered box set of 3 books still has a place on my bookshelf to this day. I’ve worked my way through every release to date, but the last 2 editions have barely had a game. It would seem Mantic’s games breath new life (and a a bit of speed) into the genre.

Photo’s of a few old painted units with the new magnetic bases to follow when I get time – hopefully at the weekend.

70 hrs a week of work

Rants

Well, the last 2 weeks have gone by in a daze as I’ve been working close to 70 hours each week. As a result I’ve barely done a single hobby related activity.

This Friday night I decided to forgo doing any work and made some movement trays for Kings of War.

I cheated this time and used bases made by Warbases. I ordered a batch of close order trays as by my calculations, they worked out just as cheap to have made and posted than to buy the plasticard and 3mm square doweling – not to mention the time It would take to build my own as I have in the past.

I used PVA glue on the edges to get the sand/grains glued to it. Allowed it to dry, then repainted the edges with watered down PVA glue. Once this had dried, a swift paint job of dark brown followed by drybrushes of light brown, bone and white. I then glued on green flock and some static grass. Not the method I use much anymore for bases, but I had to make sure the bases matched the Undead models that were going on them that I painted back in 1999-2002.

Most of the night was spent gluing small Neodymium magnets to the bases of my old figures and cutting sheets of 0.5mm self adhesive metal to fit the trays.

I was happy with the result – the wife wasn’t – there’s flock all over the place.

As you can see in the photo, the models fit the bases really well and the one sitting on it’s side show the models (even some of the old metal ones) stick to the magnetic base when turned upside down.

Sunday Afternoon

Deadzone, Paint Table

I had chance today to finish off the last of my Enforcers. I’d been putting off doing these 3 figures (the Engineer, the Burst Laser and the Rocket Launcher) for 2 reasons. One, the production on these 3 figures was pretty lousy. Quite a lot of mouldlines and lost details in important places – like the faces. Secondly, I can’t see myself using them much in the game anyway.

After these, next up for a break in Deadzone are a few more Zombicide figures. I’ve already painted about 70 Zombicide figures, and want to get a few more done before my Kickstarter for Season 3 arrives in February/March 2015.

The “dodgy” Enforcers:

Next up on the Paint table:

Deadzone Gameboard

Deadzone, Gaming

Had to laugh… everytime I think of the phrase “Game board” it makes me think of Moss in the IT Crowd. 🙂

Anyway, I managed to take a photo of all the Deadzone scenery squeezed onto the game board. A little busy, but it is the full Deadzone box set along with a scenery upgrade kit doubling the number of building tiles.

I had to use the flash for the photo, so it’s not brill, but you can see how crowded it is. All ready for a Plague vs Enforcers game tonight. /Sigh. Saturday’s used to be about partying 😦