Coming Soon to the Project

Some guest bloggers will be joining me on the project in the near future. There will be fresh insights from tournament gamers and truly gifted painters. I'm looking forward to seeing what they have to say and ogling the pretty pictures.

Coming into February this marks 6 months since I started this little projects, and I have to say that I'm quite surprised at just how well it has worked at inspiring me to paint and keep a constant flow of miniatures coming through. Continuing into the future I hope to continue to continue the trend and continue to improve with the brush as I have been.

Here is this posts painting foray,

and a little treat from down memory lane. While going through some old boxes I came across the first miniatures I put paint on, all the way back last century.

Oh the memories.

Until next time .......

Mark

2012 Totals

Miniatures Purchased: 20

Miniatures Gift/Trade: 198

Miniatures Painted: 40

Wood Elf Points: 420

Dark Angels Points: 1125

Circle Points:18

Progress of a sort

I have managed to get a little paint on some of the miniatures I started last week, although the odds and ends of life have prevented me getting as much done as I would have liked. The Grey Knight test mini is pretty much done. I may still tweak a couple of things here and there between now and when I finish the Dark Angels, which will hopefully be by the end of March. The Vindicare Assassin has had the brown and black base coated, and is ready for highlighting and metallic colours. I'm just not sure on what colour to paint a couple of areas, the mask being the primary one. I'm thinking green for the visor and maybe bone for the mask itself (the skulls will be bone as well) giving him a bit of a death mask and providing some contrast for what is a very dark miniature.

I've also managed to get some miniatures assembled to go towards finishing off the Dark Angels, I'm still not sure what I want to finish off the force to 1750 so I will probably paint a couple of extra units and vehicles.

Until next time .......

Mark

The Quiet After the Storm

After the frenzied lead up to the tournament last week I decided to have a bit of a quiet week hobby wise. I did manage to do some work on a couple of smaller projects. The first of which is a deathwatch marine for an upcoming game of the Deathwatch RPG, I don't know if we need a mini to represent our characters or not but I thought it would be fun to paint one up anyway. The second is a start on a Grey Knights test model.

I did a trade for a large batch of the old metal GK miniatures, the trade included 126 in Power Armour (12 Psycannon, 14 Incinerator, 12 Justicar, 88 Normal) and 45 in Terminator Armour (26Halberd, 15 Sword, 4 Brother Captain with 4 Incinerator and 2 Psycannon mixed in). There were a couple of metal Servo Skulls, a Penitent Psyker, and some Confrontation Miniatures that brings the model count to 198. I think I have some serious painting to do if I am going to keep my painting pledge.

I have started a Vindicare Assassin for a painting challenge on the ANZ Wargamers facebook page. They have a painting challenge every month, this months is for the oldest unpainted miniature in your collection or a conversion. Because of holidays things kicked off a little late so they put the theme to a vote and they came out with a tie and combined Jan/Feb. I have chosen to do the oldest miniature but they wern't specific as to whether it's the production or purchase date, so I went of the miniature where the two combine; Manufacture '95, Purchase '02.

I have only done the body suite so far, I have chosen red so it fits with my GK colour scheme and I'm referencing Deadpool comics for the overall look of the miniature.

pic from wikipedia

Until next time .......

Mark

Behind Enemy Lines T.O's Report.

So the tournaments been run and won, I would like to extend my thanks to everyone who participated it was a great way to open the years gaming.

The awards were as follows:

First: Trevor O'Hanlon, Salamanders using SW Codex
Second: Damian Carr, Custom Chapter using BA Codex
Third: Ryan Kerr, Chaos Space Marines
Best Sport: Raymond Everest, Blood Angels
Players Choice: Damian Carr, Custom Chapter using BA Codex (didn't get a pic unfortunately)

Overall things went well and everyone seemed to enjoy themselves, but there a couple of things I can do better for next year.

I was really happy that despite of there being no comp or restrictions most people turned up with well balanced lists, with one brave soul turning up with a Deathwing list.

Sports scores were a bit of an issue while most players quite deservedly received full sports scores, in any future events I run they will be boosted to 10 rather than 5 in order to give a little more variety in the scores and give it a greater weighting to the overall score.

Painting is another area I would like to reward a little more, I will probably boost the score to out of 10 here as well. There were only 3 fully painted army's there plus the bye buster, and I would like to give a greater incentive for people to field painted forces and reward those who put the effort in.

I will try and get a non T.O. bye buster for any future tournaments as well, I just found that I was unable to completely focus on either the game in front of me or the event as a whole. A couple of little things got past me because of this, and I gave away a couple of games because I couldn't give them my full attention.

For all those who attended, I welcome your feedback as it will help make next year even better.

Before I finish up I would like to extend a special thanks to Trev for coming in early to help me set up and for hanging around to help at the end of the day, it was appreciated mate.

Overall I really enjoyed running the event and look forward to running it again next year along with our annual fantasy tournament midyear. I hope to see everyone again next year and maybe a few new faces as well.

I did manage to snap a few pictures through the day, they were taken with my phone which doesn't have an anti shake feature so some are a little off.

And in keeping wit my resolutin to show new work in each post here is a WIP pic on a base for a small side project while I work out which army I want to do some work on.
 

Until next time .......

Mark

The Calm Before .............

Well tomorrow is tournament day, and I am ready to go. I managed to get the bye buster finished and get a couple of practice games in to freshen up on the rules and on how the army plays, I finished up with a draw in each of the games. The first against Jamie from Toy Soldiers with his Relictors (vanilla marines), and the second was against Trev from Triple Helix with his Salamanders (using codex space wolves).

 I also managed to get the Dreadnought Finished

and some terrain built just to make sure I have enough to cover the tables.

Until next time ......

Mark

Midweek Mayhem

After taking on the task of running a local 40k tournament I realized last week that I didn't have a painted 40k army to use as a bye buster. So last Wednesday I picked up a handful of half painted space marines (I think they were started around 2.5years ago), and raided what I could from a variety of other projects started over the last few years and have managed to get a 1000pt Dark Angel Army painted albeit to a basic tabletop quality. 

Now all I need to do is paint the rim's of the bases black and apply the dreaded water slide transfers and I will be able to call them completed (I apologise for the worse than usual photo but it's 37 degrees Celsius in that room at 19:30 and I don't want to go back ). I'm using the Chaplain I painted last month as the HQ. My list is as follows:

HQ Chaplain with jump pack 120

Troop1: 5 man tactical squad, meltagun, razorback TWHB 150

Troop2: 5 man tactical squad, meltagun, razorback TWHB 150

Troop3: 5 man tactical squad, flamer, razorback TWLC 175

Fast1: 10 man assault squad, no upgrades 235

Heavy1: 5 man devastator squad, 4 missile launchers 170

I don't know how well it will go if I need to play, I haven't played much since the last 40k event I ran almost two and a half years ago. I'm a little rusty and I really don't know the current meta.

For anyone who is interested the players pack is up on scribd

I have also managed to put some paint on a dreadnought through the week. I'm thinking I should have sprayed the green first then masked the armor plates, before doing the silver and wash rather than the other way round. I ended up deciding to base coat the green by hand. I just wasn't confident using the airbrush without being able to easily mask the surrounding areas, but I'm toying with the idea of trying to highlight with the airbrush.

Until next time .........

Mark

Wood Elf Wardancers #2

I have managed to finish another 5 wardancers for my wood elf army, I have also managed to put paint on enough space marines and vehicles for the first 1000pts of my Dark Angles army, due in no small part to the fact that the compressor for my airbrush arrived this morning. I have laid down the highlight a little bright compared to the ones I painted by hand but this is nothing that a wash of Badab Black can't fix, I hope.

The two on the left are there for color comparison

I am hoping to get them finished by next weekend where I am using them as the bye buster for a local 40k tournament that I'm running.

Miniatures Painted: 5
Miniatures Purchased: 20 (Empire Militia for Mordheim)

Until next time

Mark