2022 Hobby Log

New year, new project, blah, blah, blah. For me, also a new profile. There was a forum question a while back about changing names but it’s not possible and I can’t have that nasty old reminder of much more miserable times in my day to day any more so here we are. Starting fresh. It’s a bummer to leave behind all the XP but I’ve tucked my golden butt-butt-dings into a safe place and I’m ready to go adventuring fresh again.

Hopefully I’ll be able to get a couple of the old projects shared to this new name and I have several big projects planned for this year, each of which will get it’s own project log for more detail. This is  a place to just dump weekly progress esp as I’m in a mini golf league and forget each month what I’ve painted XD

I’m aiming to post once a week or so but honestly it’ll more likely depend on when I’m sitting at a PC instead of trying to use the site on my phone.

I had no intention of waiting this long to add a post but somehow we’re nearly seven weeks into the year already.

January was a little slow on the painting front. I painted some MESBG minis for the Battle Streams in Middle Earth Stream so let’s start there. All are lovely metal minis so it was a good start to the year

After deciding, entirely of my own free will (nothing to do with Gerry), that I want my 10mm based for Fantastic Battles I started rebasing the dwarves from my Khaz Modan army project from my old username. Looking up that link I realised I’ve painted up a fair bit since then that I didn’t post about so once everything is rebased I’ll get updated photos all round.

I finished off painting some extra warriors in January as well (72 minis) and as I was basing them over, put in the extra effort I was too lazy for last time round.I also wanted to make sure that all the bases could touch each other without the spearmen stabbing people which hadn’t been posible on the 20mm deep Warmaster bases before.

Milliput work, bit of painted splodged on and some homemade snow paste all done over a couple of evenings watching the Lord of the Rings extended editions. Much happier with how they look and now just need to get the rest of them done…

I’ve not done much in terms of painting the last few weeks but I have finally finished off my 10mm Black Dogs of Khaz Modan.

A few models needed some paint touched up but mostly it has just been about milliput, grey paints and homemade snow pastes. I’ll wait for a better weather day to get them all varnished but I’m very happy to call them done!

I’m a big fan of getting your excuses in early so; most of the hobby work has been in other projects. But yeah, this log has fallen behind a bit. Rather than going back and figuring out what I haven’t posted, I’m just going to jump into what I’m working on right now.

After two years of painting for the sake of painting, it is time to start cracking into stuff that matches what other people play locally. First up is Stargrave and Kill Team. I have a mountain of Orks kicking about in my hoard but I really like the new Kommandos out of the Octarius box so that’s what I’m getting cracking into first.

As this is a small force for skirmish games, I thought it was a good project to put more time into basing than I usually do. Like many hobbyists, I have a (few) boxes of saved recycling materials for doing terrain and bases.

Used on these first seven bases:

• thin eva craft foam
• an old bus card (plasticard with a layer of extra printing plastic on each side)
• cable ties
• the extra long bits of plastic rod from the many, many COVID tests I’ve taken
• floral wire
• wire from inside an ethernet cable
• rhinestone stickers
• the textured bit off a rubber glove
• embroidery canvas (or granny grating as you hear it called on pretty much every youtube channel)
• bits of plastic and tubing from party bag water pistols
• some cardboard

A few weeks ago one of my favourite artists, Chris Guest, released a free vinyl sticker. They do free art prints a couple of times a year but this was, as far as I know, this was the first time they’d done a sticker. From the announcement post:

“One of my favourite things is to share my art with everyone, so really excited about seeing where they all end up all over the world!! Enjoy!!”

Some people have put them in public spaces and I looked at a few but I’m selfish. I wanted it somewhere that I would get to see it all the time. I could spin up a yarn about needing to be inspired but the truth is I just like looking at nice things. I’ve had one of the Red Grass Games gen one wet palettes for a few years now but it was long ago tarnished with stickers. Plain surfaces just aren’t welcome in this space

Little bit of hobby whilst catching up with podcasts. The same things were used as before mostly; added in some sprue bits and then far too late remembered that I had a few lengths of plasticard i-beam. Leaving them to cure overnight and I’ll get back to them tomorrow *fingers crossed* after I build a new desk.

Still not decided if I’m going to paint the models on the bases or separately.

Way back in January I bought a tub of Biostrip 20 with a Christmas voucher. Tellingly I haven’t actually had to strip any models yet this year as I have been buying more than I should and trying to crack back into that (growing) pile of unpainted minis.

However, due to some pretty strong feelings I’ve been having recently about the hobby culture overall, I decided I want to strip a bunch of space marines I had sitting around. They were a mixture of Imperial Fists and a joke chapter I was considering painting, Bru Marines based on the colours of Scotland’s greatest creation Irn Bru.

Here we go then…

Been a bit quite on the old posting front, though still chipping away at hobby.

I’ve not had the energy for the internet if I’m completely honest. Between some scary health shenanigans, working in a field that is on it’s knees trying to prop up services for very vulnerable people in the bloody backward island called home, dealing with online conversations are just more than I can manage at the end of my day. I don’t feel part of any community any more; I have enough misery and negativity through my work to engage with the “moan about everything” discourse that surrounds most online discourse. It’s obviously not limited to our hobby.

Thankfully, the people in my local gaming community are a generally encouraging group and so long as you stick to chatting historicals with the historicals bunch and sci fi/fantasy with the other bunch, there is a very positive vibe to most of it. We’re ramping up for a winter of campaigns and new games. Getting things painted and trying to take the edge off the dark Scottish winter ahead.

I’ve a couple of projects I’m working on but they are mostly big armies so I want to get further on them before starting projects here for them so let’s focus on what got finished recently.

Back in late July someone pitched doing a short campaign using the fan-maintained Mordheim rules. I missed the Mordheim train when it first came out so was keen to see what all the fuss is about.

Knowing nothing, clearly the best plan of attack was to look through the miniatures I had and build a warband from those. Thanks to Frostgrave I have a fair amount of undead so I picked that.

Then I looked at the rulebook and realised that I need a vampire lord and the only vampire model I have, I hate (I got it from Reaper Bones and it is a horrible little plastic thing). So I bought a new one, sadly it came in a pack with three others but one of them had a nicer sword so that kitbash was (in no way) worth the price of the box.

This is where the problems began. Next I decided to order some wolves because I like the idea of dire wolves.

Then I ordered some Frostgrave Cultists to be my human dregs. Not an ideal match but I was struggling to find models I loved that weren’t going to cost me more than was worth for just a six week campaign. A single sprue of cultists was the economical choice.

I’m good at economical choices.

Before I get to the ghouls, let’s talk back story

Originally the warband was going to be headed up by Boris Von Pickett and be called the Crypt-kickers. I love the Monster Mash, it slaps as the kids say.

Then, as all the best ideas do, a thought came to me in the shower one morning.

If you’ve spent any time in Glasgow, you probably know the story of the Gorbals Vampire. For those poor, unfortunate souls who haven’t been so blessed in life, here is the brief notes:

Back in 1954 a bunch of kids in the Gorbals area of Glasgow heard that a man with iron teeth had killed a couple of wee lads. The kids, being the legends in the way only kids from a rough part of town can be, turned up in the local graveyard to hunt the killer down armed with sticks and knives. Somewhere along the way, the man with iron teeth became a vampire. The police tried moving the kids on but they all patrolled the graveyard for hours until the rain started. They went back for the next couple of nights before the shine wore off the story and the hysteria died down. If you go down to the Gorbals today there is a big graffiti mural to the vampire. Having been in that graveyard I can well believe there are unnatural things in there.

Here’s a video interviewing some of the “kids”.

Clearly, my vampire had to be Boris Von Gorbals and the crypt-kicker ghouls should be the kids who stayed in the graveyard so long to hunt him down that they feasted on whatever they could find and turned all ghoulish. Thankfully TT Combat does some wonderful ghoul children halflings.

So here we are. A warband built and painted in about three weeks. Let’s not talk about how much it ended up costing me.

The campaign was meant to start last week but I ended up in the hospital so I missed the first game. I’m going to try and play catch up but I’ve not idea if my health will let me. If nothing else, I had a lot of fun painting this lot up. And I have another 20 ghoul kids…

So 2022 is done. Thank the gods.

So a quick round up. I hate posting here these days because the site is so horribly slow but let us persevere.

Painted total for the year was only 143 but that included 13 pieces of terrain and a two month break to scream into the void. Some really fun minis in here to paint, in fact, I think I enjoyed all of them.

This is my biggest disappointment of last year. I only managed two wee games of Warhammer Underworlds in November and that was it for the whole year in terms of miniatures games.

The first three months of the year, we had regular D&D sessions but those then died with only two other being held towards the end of the year.

Board games fared fractionally better but still a poor showing compared to previous years.

Must be time to start a new project and get on some resolutions