June is nearly upon us.

Well its time to bite the bullet and decide whats next on my "get it finished" hitlist. Two reasons really, one, my stated intention of getting something done every month and two, I made the mistake of going to my not so local gaming club with Mexcian Dave last night. Why was that a mistake? Well apart from seeing the Battle of the Five Armies game in full swing (fully painted), nice looking game by the way guys! I also happened upon a game of Napoleonicmaster, thats 10mm Napoleonics played with a Warmaster Ancients variant for the uninitiated. It looked to be playing well plus with the extra room that 10mm brings to the table it looked like a Napoleonic game, line were forming, columns looked like coloumns, etc. No offence to 28mm Nappy gamers but it all looks like a glorifed skirmish in that scale, just like Warhammer, its not the frontage that looks wrong but the depth, lines look short and thick etc.

So, in short, if youve been following this blog for any length of time you'll know that I have the attention span of a goldfish and that I suffer (heavily) from the "Ohh, Shiny!!!" syndrome, so theres an order being prepared for some nice 10mm Pendraken Napoleonics. This of course means I have to get a move on and clear a drawer for them arriving. Looking at the mass of drawers and picking what I really want/need to get done, June's project to get finished is my 10mm Punic Warmaster army. Only 4 units from completion (and have been for months) I'll keep you updated with progress, at least until something else shiny grabs my attention.

Oh for Fuzzcakes!!!!!!!!!

Well looks like I'm gonna have to stop sneering at GW fanboys for at least a little while. Why?? Well my darling missus has seen me fiddling about with fantasy figures for the last week or two, so, today while she was in town, went into GW and bought me this!

Its because she's taking her mother off to Spain for a week and wont be back on my birthday, so its an early present. At worst, its two more warbands for SBH, at best, well, I'll read through the rules, probably not with an open mind, and see if theyre playable. And before you ask Dave I will not be investing in any stupid codexes or whatever the fantasy equivelant is called.


Bummer!!!!!!!

Just for Kingsleypark

I've been slathering a lot of paint about this week and some of it landed on the Wargames Factory Orcs

Not very good paint jobs you'll agree, but one of the reasons for posting this piccy is to warn Dave M off from buying these. The main problem I found with them is the arms, they've really tried to make these all things to all men, and it really hasnt worked. Mostly what you end up with are some goofy looking poses, the right arms arent too bad apart from the fact that all and sundry look like theyre about to drop their weapons. What is worse is the left arms, WF have tried to give the option of dual weilding figures, so ALL left arms have an open hand. Whats really wrong with that is that all these arms end up at an angle away from the body, so no sheilds tucked in nice and tight as you would like, and because of the angle the open hand is very visible. So will I be buying any more of these fellas??? Answer is a definite NO!!

Not bad for a quid.

Title says it all really, these little fellas, already painted, for 99p from E-Bay.

Not too badly painted either, some sort of Legion of the Damned kinda thing going on there. Dont quite know what I'm gonna use these in or as, I really, really dont want to start a Not-Eldar army for FWC. But I'm not averse to starting yet another FWC army so above I see a battalion of Grav Tanks with a command vehicle, thats always a good start, add in a giant-stompy-robot (a Not-Titan), some Adler hi-tech infantry, and you have the core of a decent army, and all for under a quid.

Another small Taa-Daa

The first Songs of Blades and Heroes warband is complete!

The leader of this merry band is Morvena Handfull of the house S'awaste whilst drinking some slave blood aboard the Black Ark overheard (wrongly) that Dwarves make excellent pleasure slaves. So she has determined to obtain 2, or maybe even 3 of these wonderful sex toys and has decended on the mainland with her following of Brides of Khaine to find these lesser creatures.

Those familiar with my normal painting "style" will be exclaiming "WHERE'S THE GUNK???", the answer dear follower is that for these little gems from the 80s I decided to actually paint them straight. Dont expect this for every warband as most will be painted in the "Dulux and Roller" style then gunked as that will be quite enough to provide these psycos with moving targets for their blades.

Black Friday indeed!!!!

Friday the 13th lived up to it's reputation for me at least, started well enough by finding a lot on e-bay of 10 Epic Eldar grav tanks (quite nicely painted) sitting with no bids at 0.99p, so I just had to put in a cheeky wee £1 bid. So after lunch I thought I'd check on how I was doing and lo and behold, I'd won them. I then went off to do some painting and later on nearer tea-time I thought I'd just go and give the chappy his quid. Thats when it all started going pear-shaped, my computer quite unexpectedly informed me that I "was not connected to the internet" For those of you who know me thats like being told that my house is an air free zone. I thought about it and blamed the network cable, 2 cables later and it was dawning on me the horrible truth, it wasnt the cables it was the network port in my computer. Ok, I thought, clutching my towel to my chest, dont panic, I had a USB wireless dongle kicking about in my desk drawer, I'll just plug that in. Well try as I might that little bugger just wouldnt work with Windows 7. A few phone calls to the local PC shops later and I was kicking myself for buying the neat little space saver tower as getting a network card that would physically fit into the slimline case wasn't gonna be a quick jaunt down to the shop before they closed. Then like an epiphany my wonderful missus chimes in with the comment "Why not just get a whole new tower?" So instead of sitting at a 2.5 Ghz Dual-CPU machine I find myself waffling away on a 3.2 Ghz Quad-CPU machine, yes its spiffy, yes its a lot faster, but its going to take me weeks to get it the way I want it, i.e. the way the old one was.

So basically, instead of the next whole lot of months purchasing for wargaming, I now have a new 'puter'.

In some ways happy, it is faster and should run my other addiction, World of Warcraft a whole heap smoother, but in other ways sad, I'm skint and will stay that way for a good while.

Finished

Taa-Daa

Again apologies for the fact that space is green, but to be honest I cba to clear the table dig out the black drape just to snap a couple of picces. These are the 2 small pirate fleets for my Italians to chase about, if I ever find a set of rules that I fancy. They wont win any painting prizes, but they are at last ready to rumble.

Progress

Here they are the mighty Italian Stallions, or maybe just my Federal States Europa fleet, finished.

Just 5 pirate ships to do now, quite happy with progress on this.

The start of the new beginning

Ok the title is kinda strange, but its a follow on from a previous post, I intended to start doing what I stated earlier, i.e. get something finished, next month, but I've decided to make a start now.

So what am I forcing myself to get done?

This!

Its a very large Full Thrust spacefleet with a couple of smaller pirate fleets as well, I must have bought this lot at least 2 years ago, its time they were done.

I think the main problem I had finishing them was quite simply the rules, we had planned on using GZG free Full Thrust rules, but they turned out to be clunky in the extreme. They would be fine if you were just using 2 or 3 ships, but as you can see that wasnt quite what we were looking for. So for want of a decent set of rules for large fleets these have been lying in that state for 2 years. Well, no longer, this is the first project that I will complete before I flit onto whatever shiny thing catches my eye next.

Da Orcses

Well just for Kingsleypark, I got a shunt on this morning and finished building my Glade Guards, then proceeded to make a start on the Orcs. Here's a piccie of whats one each of the 8 sprues.

As for size comparisons, as I dont have any GW or Mantic Orcs the best I can do is pop a GW Witch Elf into the piccy.

you have to take into account that she is on a thicker base, closer to the camera and is also sporting quite a "bouffant" hairdo. You'd never convince anyone that these are Greater or Black orcs, but they certainly wouldnt look out of place in a Warhamster army. 

Carronade 2011

Well yesterday myself and Mexican Dave went off to Carronade kindly transported there by Kingsleypark (da uvver Dave), within a minute of entering the building I was parted with some of my spending cash. Well I was intending to buy the Wargames Factory Shock Troopers anyway for SoTR and there they were, a bashed box of them at a mere tenner, sorry couldnt resist it was just one of those "must have" moments.

The show continued to provide me with wallet opening temptations when one trader was unloading his stock of Bolt Action plastic Germans at again another tenner, Mexican Dave's resistance crumbled at that trader and he purchased some Plastic Soldier Russians (20mm) for the princely sum of six quid.

So all in all I was well chuffed that was 43 SoTR troops bought for only £20, but the show was to provide me with more horrors as Cavilier Books had the audacity to be carrying 2 of my other things on my wish list, WF's Amazons and Orcs, well after parting with another £30 for those my wallet was looking a little aenemic. but thankfully Pendraken didnt have the War of the Roses Lancastrians with them so that was my saving grace for the day.

Mexican Dave on the other hand since he'd bought the Russians had the misfortune to stumble onto not only the Heavy Weapons pack but also the 3 pack of T34s, and being the book addict he is he found about a dozen Ospreys as well, so we came back from the show with well depleted wallets, but 2 happy wargamers.

I also found on arriving home that the postie had been kind enough to deliver 2 of my E-bay purchases, the Glade Guard and the Witch Elves, so the Songs of Blades and Heroes project now looks like this.

Since Kingslypark is currently building an Orc and Goblin army for Warhamster I thought I'd treat him to some piccies over the coming weeks of the WF Orcs to help him decide if he wanted to go down the WF route to bulk his boyz up,

as normal with WF all the sprues stack neatly and clip together, but a thought passed through my brain, why is the Amazon box so much bigger????

Oh, Dear!!!! That look like a pretty complicated bunch of building, I think these will be the last batch built, lots and lots of tiny bits.

And lastly a test shot of how well the WF Shock Troops match up with the metal West Wind troops.

Oh taller and beefier, but at first glance the Bolt Action figures look a little smaller and slimmer that works for me, not everyone is a 6ft muscle bound giant the same as not everyone is a 5 foot 6 anoerexic.

and yet more SBH

Just won this lot of PMT bitches on e-bay, another fiver, another warband

with a little paint these should look ok, I hope..............

More Songs of Blades and Heroes

Well, with my usual impatience, I couldnt wait for the Elves and Goblins from e-bay and went rummaging, and no surprises, I did indeed find something that would fit the bill.

A Greeky (or should that be Geeky) themed warband, a poor 2nd son of a Hoplite land owner off to find fame and fortune backed up by some of his fathers Helots. Just an Immortal minis plastic hoplite and 7 of Wargames Factory's  Numidians, not the best figures in the world but they'll do well enough, at least for the time being.

A new beginning

4 months of the year gone already, and while I can happily say that yes, there has been more painted than bought, I dont see much in the way of finished projects. I feel its time to reign in my butterfly mind, its way to easy to get up in the morning and think that ho-hum, what will I do today? Put some paint on a few models from that project, and the next day, do something totally unrelated. Things are getting painted but not ones that get anything new onto the table.

So, from this month on, its going to have to be a case of painting the stuff for a single project, and then if theres any time remaining in the month, paint whatever grabs my attention. In the grand scheme of things I think I'd rather see all these toys of mine on the table badly (unwillingly) painted than have them languishing in drawers awaiting a better paint job.

So the rest of this month is going towards clearing all the figures that are on my painting desk, then next month its pick a project and stick with it.