All Activity

Flocked, tufted and sitting outside for the varnish to cure - but think these are now done.

Nice work folks, can you believe nearly half way though October already (don't blink). Am doing up some 'Tin Soldier' 15mm metal ancient Indian spearmen currently (because they are my latest random 'cheapish' bargain purchase, don't need 'em but want 'em coz they are cheap). After that I need to get the proverbial finger out for some 28mm ACW as we have a (free set of rules called) Valour & Fortitude (check out the perry miniatures website for more details) battle at the local club next month. Got to finish off my Rebel Louisiana Tigers regiment and tweak my artillery limbers. Also, I just bought 2 more mounted perry ACW officers so that , at a stretch, is my October goal. I will try and post piccy's if I actually do any of the above lofty goals. Happy hobby-ing to you all! cheers

Good to see you back and posting!

And I've got these for future aerospace type releases...

First update post. My battletech collection since an earlier post about them got a like since I did my comeback post.

Been a while getting back to these, but some of the terrain tiles I've been working on in the last few months. PVA still wet for a couple, so set them outside to hopefully speed up the curing in today's sun. Might need to add a few trees to the tower tile.

It's very funny and cool they come in coloured plastic. Two colours, they're basically tt ready right?

Finished assembling all my StarCraft minis from the initial wave. Now to work out a basing scheme and get painting.

Some more thread resurection. I'll be posting updated pics of the collections I still have over the next little bit. During the last 5 years since my last post I moved out of my house for a year and a half, got rid of a lot of the stuff (including all my terrain and the Necrons) and have got a lot more to replace that which was lost. I've been back home for almost a year, retired, so I've got a bit to show. To come: New terrain collection Age of Sigmar forces Update on the Marines Other 40K armies Warmachine Roleplaying game figures Any requests for stuff to be done early?

Thread resurrection. There's a group that meets regularly in Canberra, once every two weeks at two locations: every 2nd Wednesday at Vikings in Lanyon and 2nd Friday Belconnen mall). There are other regular events as well on the weekends but I'm only just getting back into the scene and not all over that yet.

I remembered to take photos of a game! My local club (Group North in Adelaide) is having its annual Open Day later this month and I will be running a game of 'Valour and Fortitude' Napoleonics, with French versus British somewhere in Spain. Yes, I get to use more of the Napoleonics I have been painting. First photo shows a battlefield overview several turns into the game. In the foreground light cavalry brigades are facing off: British at left and French at centre. Cavalry fights in the V&F rules are fast and nasty: if you don't break the opponent on your charge, you get thumped by fresh opponents. Here the French cavalry ended up winning, only to see it crumble as artillery canister and British riflemen picked off crippled units before they could rally. The middle of the battle lines show a fresh infantry brigade arriving on each side. This is Napoleonics: escalation is mandatory! Next photo is a better view of the opposite end of the table. The British in the foreground are attempting to grind down the French flank with firepower: this had mixed results and had to be finished off with bayonet work. At right in the photo the French are attempting to capture the farm. They eventually got in, but were badly mauled doing so. The cotton fluffballs denote units that fired. On infantry one fluff ball means fired, then can do any action except charge. Two fluff balls means the unit volleyed and cannot take a further action this turn. I only have a 6'x4' table for the Open Day game, so for our practice games all infantry and cavalry units are half size at two bases instead of the usual four bases and all distances are halved.

Higher def photos! (unless the reason they look stunning is because potato picture 😁)

Some recent painting and it's not Napoleonics! First up is an Uruk scout command group for the current GW Lord of the Rings game. From left to right: un-named captain, shaman, standard and drummer. These figures finish my 'Lurtz's Scouts' army, and they can do double duty as command in a generic Uruk army. Next are some some Uruk pikes. Moving to sci-fi, next we have some monopose generic police by Metal Magic. These 25mm figures were sculpted decades ago and still look fine. Years ago I had painted these in a 1980s-era look of mid blue with white helmet, but nowadays that seems out of place with the police deployed by modern dictators. So I repainted them in black and dark grey.

Our gaming group has recently started playing the occasional game of kill team. The first three games were a series of PVE linked scenarios using marine scouts against a Necron sniper and its buddies. I like that the game uses small elite groups, so decided to paint up an Ultramarine Angels of Death kill team.

G’day all from the Slave dungeon, Today we only have a small release of some new 28mm Alien Invasion miniatures. There are 2 vehicles in the form of the Dune Stalker Command vehicle, and the Sand Reaper heavy weapon vehicle platform. We also have the Command figure from the command vehicle being released as an individual figure. These figures are the continued expansion of the range that Michael Broadbent sculpted many years ago and have now been re-designed by Ross Franks of https://www.twistedpancreas.com/ For these, and all of our other great ranges, check out slave2gaming.com

With my first tournament ever out of the way I've had my fill of lizardmen for now, so on to my neglected skaven army yes-yes! Some people hate rebasing minis but it's very zen to me - only downside is now I have heaps of 20mm squares no longer useful. And I also had the stormvermin on really nice glowing warpstone-green old cobblestone B2B resin bases. Though they're monopose (and of course very complex, bespoke fits so no customising) the new AoS clanrat models are so damned nice.

October already...feels like it was January only yesterday. Anyway, another month and more hobby! I got my Starcraft minis yesterday, so I'm hoping to get a bunch of them at least assembled this month.

A side project this time. I recently scored three sets of mdf counters with flag symbols for Britain, France and Prussia/Germany. The first photo shows some unpainted samples: functional but not all that good to look at. The markers are 25mm diameter. So I decided to paint them, even though I didn't need to. The next photo shows how they turned out. There are 25 of each nation so plenty to use as activation markers. The other side is blank, so can be used as ambush or reinforcement markers. They can also work as objective markers.

😁

Attended my first ever tournament, and first time I can remember ever playing back-to-back full sized games. My brain didn't melt as expected and I had a great time! We're all a friendly community so our version of being ruthlessly competitive is going from "I wouldn't do that because X Y Z" to "Just remember that I have this unit over here if you do that." so there was plenty of joint rules-correcting as well as "whoops we're resolving the combat results but I forgot my assailment spell can I do that now?" "absolutely!" Was ten players, 5 vs 5 order vs chaos, with the first scenario being a "hold out as long as you can" Game 1 my temple guard FROGBRICK fought a grinding war of attrition befitting their role with the Slann dominating magic as the old ones intended. His idiot level 1 wizard apprentice skink priest miscast on turn 2 over in those woods but not before blocking the big bad chaos lord on dragon with a column of crystal, so it had to just fluff around going super saiyan with buffs for a few turns. This probably won me the game. The smaller dragon ripped into my Saurus but was seen off from sheer numbers and stubborn will. Off to the right my cold ones marching column up the flank (hooray for Drilled) and then ran down the fleeing dragon (it came back next turn and got revenge, special unit recyclingrules for the scenario) and went to beat up the mutant guys way at the back. By the end of game the TG brick was slowly ground down (but never fell back off the board!) and the Slann was run down (I made an unwise flee reaction) but as I had some skinks left running around the place (including that damned apprentice wizard) I won the scenario as I had units holding out for 8 turns! Game 2 against Ogres. The FROGBRICK did the exact same again, a grinding non-retreat on that hill all game while dominating the magic. The unit has a -1 to be hit banner and FROG was giving them ethereal/ward save/extra attacks turn to turn. My poor opponent got his giant into combat with them and was excited to use the special attack where the giant grabs an enemy and shoves them into a bag. This means I have to pass an Initiative check and Temple Guard are only initiative 2! Then on a 4+ the giant does it again, repeat until failure. But somehow I kept on rolling 1s or 2s and so his excitement was extinguished and all game the giant probably only killed three TG models! The only better matchup would have been against Saurus Warriors who are ini 1. On the right the Cold Ones stumbled a turn 1 charge but got stuck into the three ogres in turn 2, at which point the stone horn had eaten the skinks. When the ogres were destroyed the stone horn routed and fled through the gnoblars to go waste the rest of the game in his back lines! On the opposite end of the board a salamander and razordon had great fun destroying a gnoblar unit, the elite and scary mournefang cavalary met an immovable object in my Saurus block, and then my son the bastilodon and a salamander got into their side and sent them packing. Eventually though the casualties piled up (and I failed to finish off damaged enemy characters) and the ogres won the game. Game 3 against chaos, my opponent had all stormcast minis from AoS painted in a very simple but effective evil fashion! My FROG dropped the ball big time with magic this game, lots of fails to cast and dispel, though he did get to use cupped hands of the old ones to throw a miscast explosion at the enemy TWICE. It's extremely fun being excited to miscast! The Cold Ones rode up the flank and blitzed his distraction-dragon-ogres, setting themselves up for a great flank. The Temple Guard and opposing enemy death brick had a whole bunch of awkward shuffling, magic and failed charges before things kicked off. On the opposite flank two more distraction DOs blitzed some skink skirmishers and got stuck into my son. My son ended up shrugging off the DOs, beating them (with his thagomiser doing much of the work!) and getting stuck in to help the temple guard. The saurus brick held the other chaos warriors for the cold ones to charge (and a razordon in the side! the free style of movement on those beasts is quite powerful even if they're not the best at doing damage in combat) and sent them fleeing, before the counter attack by mounted chosen swept them away. However they rallied near my board edge, the chosen charged again then overran off the board keeping them from further damage. The TG brick gradually held back the chaos warriors, grinding away until all that remained was the TG banner, scar veteran with BSB and the frog, and by then the bastilodon and razordon came to help finally breaking the unit who was then run down! A final bit of mopping up, again with salamander and razordon moving around firing freely and I got the win. I think those beasts only rolled a misfire (meaning they eat their handlers) once the whole tournament! In the end the Chaos faction had more wins so won overall, our dwarf player (a complete and utter gunline list) won every game so took first place.... but after him I won out of the Order players! So my first every tournament and a podium position!

My friends and I have been getting nostalgic for past 40K shenanigans, so we're planning for a big Apocalypse game between Christmas and New Year. One thing I've always wanted is a retro Ork army. Think 2nd ed 40K Orks and their wonderful aesthetic. I've discovered Trollet Miniatures and their amazing retro Ork sculpts, so I've laid out a little money and purchased many STLs. My resin printer is going Brrrrr, and the first batch of Bad Moonz boyz are ready for a primer! These really are wonderful STLs! I can't wait to paint them in a retro Bad Moonz scheme.

I had to take a break for a few days and the next week or so will be spotty at best (2 deaths in the family. ), I've got that building mostly finished. New roof panels, some lighting and a couple of little mods. Just have to finish marking the panels in.

Yes, it's more Napoleonics! Additions to my growing French dragoon brigade. These are again 25mm Miniature Figurines. And some side views to show the extra work that goes into the rear of the models. For variety I also finished some Lord of the Rings Uruk scouts. Two of them have shields carved off spare Uruk warrior models. When I did a list recently for a game using Lurtz's Scouts, to my surprise the bottleneck in the force design was the number of shielded scouts I have.

I've had this kit for a couple of years now. I thought I'd get started building it. Other kits in the range had assembly instructions (this doesn't). I bought it second hand, but it was still factory sealed. It's going onto my infinity table. Since the 'roof' pieces are corflute, I'll be swapping those out for some other pieces cut from 2mm or 3mm foamed pvc sheet (which is what this kit is made from, anyway) appropriately painted.

It is amazing how time slips away from you. Many distractions, but every now and then I still return to the painting table. Progress is slow, but motivation in recent weeks has hit a high. So although I only have a couple of models to update on, it brings with it yet another milestone for my painting. First up, the tactical genius for the Aeldari, an Autarch... I figured that he should follow the Craftworld scheme rather than random colours like the Aspects of this army, although the helmet I went with beige rather than purple. I tried to fancy him up a bit and with the light green armour he should pop amongst the Aspects (maybe not the Scorpions...) Next up is one of the bigger models I have done in a while and was a gift from a good friend a couple(?) of years ago now. Finally has some love. The Avatar of Khaine. I really dig the plastic kit, and I have always preferred the idea of a spear for him than a sword. I also have never been a fan of the 'traditional' head so jumped at the chance to choose one of the other options. I really wanted to have a crack at the idea of the statue that the Avatar is until it is woken up heating up and the armour being the outer layer is the last part to get hot. My painting skills are not up to some of the amazing inspiration I searched for online, but I am really happy with how he has come together. It is also the first time I really had a crack at working with super thin paint (I am usually far too lazy for that). I am also really pleased with the base as well, I think he is one of the better models that I have done in recent times. It may be that it was a brand new model which is unusal for me, so many of my models are rescues and have seen a bit of use and the bare plastic was easier to get clean colour onto. Or that may just be my imagination. But, the real significance of these two models is not just that I really enjoyed painting them both, but they were the last two models that were missing from the Eldar army! So, without further prattle, here is the finished Eldar... Like I said all the way back when I started this army, I was using the Swordwind format for the army which means all Aspects. The HQ of the army, the Avatar to lead from the front and the Autarch to try to hold it all together. The troops of the army, two squads of Dire Avengers. I had considered painting them the same, but figured my Craftworld was big enought to have a couple of Dire Avenger Temples and thought having unique colours for every squad would fit the theme better anyway. The elites of the army, a squad each of Fire Dragons, Howling Banshees and Striking Scoprions. I tried to keep quite traditional (or at least 90's traditional) for their schemes. The Fast Attack of the army, they definitely stand out, of all my years collecting and playing Eldar I have never actually fielded Swooping Hawks or Shining Spears, maybe I will get them on a table soon? The Heavy Support of the army, a squad of Dark Reapers, they are another Aspect I haven't used a lot and the few times I did they really felt unfair on my opponent. And finally, the Dedicated Transports. Three Wave Serpents, they have defaulted to the Craftworld colours as they are the only non-Aspects in the army (excluding the Autarch and Avatar). The full army. It may have taken a very long time, but I am really happy with them all together. The crazy colours bring back memories of Eldar armies of the 90's. Now it is time to get back to the Tomb Kings that have been put on hold far too many times...