2024 Hobby Log

I picked up Kill Team Hivestorm recently because everything in the box looked cool and the solo/co-op play mode interests me. There is a pretty strong local community for the game here but I’ve found them more focused on min-maxing and tournament play which is the last thing I have an interest in, especially for skirmish games. To be clear, they are a nice bunch of guys but when the main person spearheading the community doesn’t paint minis and only plays with the strongest current team, we’re just not both going to enjoy our game.

So solo Kill Team gets a roll out. Even if it isn’t fun, the models in the box are lovely and I’m excited to paint them up. The terrain doubles up on some I already had but the two big stronghold buildings will be nice additions.

A couple of evenings with a good audiobook and everything was built. Unfortunately the Scottish autumn is truly with us and spray priming had to be done over two days. I’ll cover each of the Kill Teams and the terrain in their own posts so let’s start with…

The human faction in the box were destined to be painted up as my personal Guard outfit, Rath’s Furies. The models are great and because they are for solo play, making sure the team was WYSIWYG just wasn’t a priority.

Painting:

1. Prime Colour Forge Matt Black
2. Main armour colour was Vallejo Model Colour 70.980 Black Green
3. Trim and metal detailing was done with Citadel Canoptek Alloy to make the metal a little warmer than a more normal (for me anyway) gun metal.
4. Straps and leather pouches with Citadel Doombull Brown
5. Only the leader went without her helmet to make her easier to spot on the table so she got some Citadel Kislev Flesh (wash with Citadel Reikland Fleshshade and highlight back up with Kislev)
6. Gasmask tubing was Vallejo Model Colour 70.988 Khaki
7. The fabric clothing under their armour was left black
8. All the weapons were left black but got a light drybrush of Army Painter Gun Metal, as did the jumpacks
9. The officer’s bunnet was Vallejo Model Colour 70.982 Cavalry Brown
10. lenses on the helmets got dotted with Army Painter Fanatics Pure Red
11. All the bases got a thin layer of Citadel Technical paint Astrogranite
12. Everything got an all over wash with Citadel Nuln Oil
13. Highlight back up with base colours
14. Bases got a drybrush of  Citadel Dawnstone around the edges leaving under the model darker thanks to the Nuln Oil. It is a bit of a cheat but it gives a rough idea of shadow
15. They are sci fi minis so of course they were rimmed with black

Over all they took a day to get done, most of that being because I find trim work mind numbingly tedious and kept getting up to make another cup of tea. I’ve happy with the end result though; they would look better with an extra pass of highlights but I’ve turned into a much lazier painter over the last couple of years and rarely bother with anything more than just a highlight with base colours.

For the last few years, I’ve spent my Sunday evenings through the autumn and winter playing solo board and card games. One night a week completely offline, playing a game – it is delightful. This year I’ve decided to add in miniatures games to the mix; a chance to try some new games and paint up some of the minis from the stash that don’t really have a reason to get painted otherwise.

One of the genres I have a couple of games for is science fiction. Thankfully I also have a bunch of minis that I can paint up but I was lacking some basic cultists. Now I could have bought a box of Stargrave cultists and weapon swapped them but I really don’t like the look of the Northstar plastics and didn’t enjoy painting them for Frostgrave a few years back. Great kits, it is a me problem. Thankfully, the old GW cultists are cheap as chips to pick up on eBay and I got 20 odd of them for £12.50.

They came “fully painted” according to the seller but they are awful. I was going to strip them but the layers that are there aren’t very thick and, at the end of the day, these are just cultists… 

1. a couple of evenings painting over the existing base colours with the Army Painter Fanatics paints, tidying as I went was nice easy work. 
2. Everyone got a dark tone wash – this left them all shiny but other than a pass with skin tones, I’ll only be knocking that back with matte varnish.
3. Basing is going to be done later once there is a bunch of stuff that needs done in one big batch
4. This is sci fi so obviously the rims are black.

And just like that, some of the cultists are done. They won’t win awards but they don’t need to… they need to die in droves while the big bad plots and the good guys go do a do-gooding.  I’ll keep working my way through them but they are really dull to paint so I might mix them into other things for a bit.

After a good few months of working on big projects, I decided I wanted to work on something more contained. Something that could be done in a month and possibly get a game in. I’m working on Burrows and Badgers but that is mainly just terrain as the warbands are already painted up.

Going into the stash, there were several options jumped out but I fancied a little something sci fi. I’ve had a Deadzone starter box in there for a while so out it came.

There aren’t a lot of models to [paint up (24 in total) but there is a bunch of terrain. Until I figure out what arms etc to stick on the models, I thought I’d pick out and clean up the terrain first. Part way through I remembered that someone I was on a discord with a couple of years back gave me a bag of Deadzone tiles so I have a few extras. I  also added in an extra Terrain Crate (one of the £30 booster sets, £24 from your online discount retailer of choice) to have access to more intact walls.

Then, before I did anything else I went back and re-read all of Draconis’ magnificent Delving back into Deadzone project here on OTT.

My whole plan had been to be mostly intact buildings but once I got started putting everything together, I really liked the look of the ruined bits. It makes every space playable and while that might not make sense if we want to get into the woods of what each building is designed for, it’ll make for a more interesting play experience.

So I stuck on Fellowship of the Ring and got to cleaning and dry fitting some buildings. As designed, the terrain comes with these little plastic tabs that mean you don’t need to glue anything and every piece can be modular. Possibly I’m just a pathetic nerd with no upper body strength but I found the piecing together just annoying enough to realise that I don’t want to have to do it every time I want to play a game. After a bit of online research, I decided instead to stick with a couple of fundamental footprints (2×1, L-shaped and a small tower) that I could glue together and some scatter for cover. It was important that it fits back into the starter box for both storage and ease of taking wherever I can get a game in.

I know that the conventional wisdom says terrain shouldn’t be too colourful or it up-stands the minis. I get that, I do. But… Look at this stuff from a Kickstarter a while back? Doesn’t that look neat? I have a second table planned for Deadzone that will be more neutrally coloured so in the meantime I’m going to live my colour loving life.

As it is terrain, it seemed like a good opportunity to use up some cans of white primer that I’ve not really been impressed with. The TT Combat sprays have been great but for some reason the white is always a bit spluttery and this can in particular is really bad. After trying to battle through, it was making such a mess I had to chuck it and go for a can of Colour Forge’s Wight Bone.

Next was some masking tape. The band at the bottom of the buildings was to be quite narrow with a wider one at the top. This secondary colour is Army Painter Deep Blue. Unfortunately the white primer had done a bit of a number on the plastic in places but some weathering should cover up the worst of it.

I went round with Wraithbone in a pot and tied up the little spots of bleed once the masking tape was off; not an exact colour match (the pot is a little darker) but it won’t be very noticeable on the final product.

I wasn’t going to spend a lot of time on details but going through and picking out a metallic vent here, exposed rebar there. I do want this terrain to look like a clean version of sci-fi (the planet has only recently been declared a Deadzone). To look a little more fancy I went with a Vallejo Black Metallic paint for the vents, door panels etc. I then went over the exposed rebar with some Citadel Leadbelcher.

All this was done over the course of a day with lots of time waiting on primer drying. This is where it will have to stay for a few weeks as I’m on a bit of a slog at work and I want a nice clear weekend for the next stage.

I’ve spent so much time over the last few months batch painting or working on big armies that I felt the need this weekend to change it up. Just paint a single miniature, start to finish – not rushing to get onto the next one, not painting twenty belts in a row.

It was really nice, I had fun and added another goblin to my little band of random goblins.

“Aaaargh, why do I leave things to last minute” game ready. That’s what I call this painting level. Not finished, just got enough paint for their first game! There’s not one highlight on them. I’m fine with this. Definitely fine.

Though the team is called the Fjordadelphia Blood Eagles, I leaned into the colour palette of Washington rather Philly. We’re about the blood part of the Blood Eagles.

Colours used:

• Khorne red and Yriel Yellow are the two team colours
• P3 Coal Black for fabric
• Kislev Flesh and Pallid Wych Flesh for, well, the flesh
• Rhinos Hide for dark leather
• Skavenblight Dinge for fur
• All over wash with Agrax thinned 50/50 with medium

Now, any sharp eyed CoGs will notice looking at the photos that there are only four linemen and one berserker. I’m glad you noticed. I didn’t, until I was adding their numbers. Oh well, I don’t have time to paint up my fifth lineman so we’ll just going to have to proxy for game one.

They’ll be back later, once I have the rest of the box painted, this lot actually finished and more done to the bases. They’ll do for the first game or two though.

In the name of playing more games, I’ve been looking round our local community. Easily the most active is, as I’m sure it is in many places, the Blood Bowl players. Constantly have leagues running and they seem to pop up everywhere. One of the local clubs are about to start a new season and so the time has come to paint up one of the several teams I own and learn the rules. They’ve been forewarned that I know almost nothing!

I’ve got two goals I’m setting myself for this league – have a fully painted team and play all my games. That’s it. So let’s start on goal number one.

The league starts *checks calendar* tomorrow. Thankfully my first game isn’t going to be until next Monday though because of work so I actually have a week to get my starting 11 ready for the table.

I’ve gone with the Norse team that I’ve had for at least a year at this point. Mostly because they look like they will be fun to paint but also they are tier one which, according to the book, makes them more forgiving to play.

The starting roster is:

• 1 x yhetee
• 2 x Valkyries
• 2 x Ulfwerener
• 5 x Linemen
• 1 x beer boar

I have the official GW team box which makes most of the team but I’ll be damned if I’m paying them £26 for a Yhetee model so a quick trip to Myminifactory, £3.50 spent and 7 or so hours later, I have my yeti. With everyone built and primed with a black then white zenithal, this week’s break from Feegles begins.

In a stunning turn in events, I played games two weeks in a row! Last week’s slightly traumatising Legions Imperialis game was swept away by a fantastic game of Kings of War Armada.

Woodstock and I haven’t had this game on the table since the global campaign last year but my fish were giving me the evil eye every time I walked past the cabinet and with this renewed effort to play more games it was an obvious choice. Woodstock brought her lovely painted Basileans. We rolled up a scenario and then decided we didn’t like it and went with Flotsam and Jetsam.

A Basilean merchant ship got into trouble in the shallow seas and disappeared without a trace… well, not without a trace. It left behind 10 tokens or varying unknown points values from 0 to 2. Did it run into a underwater reef? Fall foul of a wicked storm? Attacked and sunk by a giant squid captained by a man called Papacito? Who can tell?

Papacito, his squid and it’s friends happened upon the scene completely innocently at around the same time as the human rescue fleet arrived. Being creatures of the sea, they are fiercely against human detritus polluting their waters and began to clear it up.

After a turn of both fleets mostly swiping up junk from the sea, the poor aquatic creatures got a little disorientated and accidentally let off their weapons in the general direction of the Basileans. They tried to apologise but stupid humans don’t speak fish. Instead they viciously attacked.

Unlike this stinky orcs that the Trident Realms went up against last year, the giant (for a crab and yet Tiny in game) crab put in a valiant effort to its grapple and boarding actions. The true star of the grapple, unsurprisingly, was Squiddy. Those magnificent tentacles can strike at 4 inches instead of the usual 3 and managed to take out a ship in one turn. Sadly the tidal wave remained largely ineffective.

A couple more turns and things were fairly evenly matched but in turn four Squiddy took several broadsides and ended up being pushed over its nerve value. The next activation came around and Papacito surrendered despite being at the outer edge of the 10 inch enemy range. They dropped the three loot tokens they were holding and by the end of the following turn it became apparent that the creatures couldn’t recover enough tokens to outscore the Basileans.

It was another great game which reminded us both how much we want to play it more. I definitely need to paint up a fleet that gets broadsides as raking fire is a big thing to not have access to. I love the look of the Trident Realms on the table but I could see me dipping into the Basileans that I have to hand to get them painted up.

Most things I’ve been working on this year are for other projects but I did dabble into some lizardmen models for a charity army project. I was sent the models to paint; I’ve never painted lizardmen before but these were fun to work on.

I’ll update this post when the auction goes live.

I’ve been very unwell this week so haven’t managed much in terms of hobby this week. I also had to make a flamingo. Being the only person in a friendship group with a jigsaw leads to some strange requests.

The hobby I did manage to do is still not ready to see the internet but I can show the finished bit so far.

What could these be for???

My main focus this year is big armies so January was a good month on that front. I’m in a slow grow for Kings of War and we’re meant to have 750 points ready for February. I’m two models short for my list but I managed to get the three regiments done.

Gaslands was going to be my second project for the month but my epic pre-order finally came in and so excitement overtook me and the production line ramped up. I still have a fair bit to paint to get an army to the table however I’m very happy with what I have so far.

Talking about Gaslands, it takes about as long to get a box of epic infantry ready to prime as it does to kitbash a gaslands car ready to prime. Both take an hour but are very different experiences; some days the mindless prep is what you need, other days it is the creative digging around in the bits box and making broom broom noises as you go. I have a second vehicle kitbashed and primed but mentally I’ve been in batch painting mode and I’m finding switching a little tricky right now.

All in all, the first month of the year is done and I’m happy with what I got painted up. February should be a bit easier on the batch painting and will have some experiments with a new painting style… I have a plan but I’m currently watching A Fistful of Dollars right now so who knows how long I’ll manage to stay on track.

Counts for the month:

• Riftforged orcs – 50
• Sons of Horus – 203 (44 bases and 15 vehicles)
• Gaslands – 1

Each year I try to rein in my hobby butterfly with some goals. 2023’s were largely successful so this year’s build on those.

1. Play more games. Last year I got to meet Woodstock and had some great game days with them. I played with a few other people and, even when I didn’t enjoy the rule sets, the games were fun. This year I’d like to play more games with more new people. If I could get to the table with something twice a month, that would be fantastic. Solo games would also count for this.
2. Paint for more charity events. I used to do a 24 hour charity stream every year but my health doesn’t really mean that is possible these days so focusing in on other ways I can contribute to charity work would be nice. After the success of The Ginger Dwarf raffle and the Space Ducks projects over the last two years, giving my hobby time feels like a logical way to do that.
3. Finish up the year with more models painted than unpainted in my collection. I have fallen back into bad habits over the last couple of years, especially when my mental health is bad, buying models I don’t need and can’t really afford and then doing nothing with them. Being honest with myself, there needs to be a big cull but also just working on painting existing projects will help.
4. A big group game for a big celebration in the summer.
5. Try going to tournaments – likely Kings of War. I’ve never been to any kind of tournament and it is a side of the hobby I’d like to try. I’m a scrub player but I want to see what another way of playing looks and feels like.

These Hobby Logs tend to be where I post about all the minis that don’t fit into other projects but that are still part of my hobby.It could also be called the Odds and Sods Logs.

I think this year I’ll also do a monthly round up including everything across all the projects – mainly so it is easier for me to keep track of what I’m doing.