#6MMRPC - Month One So Far...

When the start of the Challenge was recently coming up, I'd decided (and discussed with a few friends) that I would be ceasing assembly of miniatures from the Lead Mountain until I'd managed to finish off a hundred or so of the items I already had assembled and undercoated. Unfortunately, this plan failed - here's what I recently got put together/cleaned up...

This basically started as me taking a few sprues of Gripping Beast plastic Saxons and Dark Age Warriors home with me to my parents house to have something to assemble on the couple of evenings I stayed over theirs and just continued when I got back to my house...

In the end I've assembled:

16 Saxon Warriors
24 Dark Age Warriors (half assembled with close combat weapons, half with slings, but all every figure has a pouch for missiles plus a sling or axe/sword at their waist, depending on what they're armed with, so I could use them all as slingers if needed)

Around 7 different Saxon leaders or Champions - I needed more for Dux Britanniarum or if one Warlord dies in a SAGA campaign and I want to replace them

A large pack of Chaos Hounds - these have been on the to-do list for a while. Some had been previously built and painted as part of my old Warhammer Chaos army, but for skirmish gaming I decided that I wanted them on the lipped bases. Whilst rebasing them I decided that I'd just repaint them all

Misc. fantasy RPG characters

Bats - these are from Avatars of War, I drilled holes into them and mounted them on flying bases

Knights/Troll/Apothecary - these have been waiting in my assembly queue for a while - I thought they'd be useful for Frostgrave

Fantasy Celt warband - a mix of human troops from the wargame Celtos armed with slinger poles, some oldhammer barbarians and a Tharn Ravager as heavy support - I decided that these would work well together with the fen beast/shambling mound/re-purposed Heroclix man-thing/Truthsayer that I have in the painting queue as a swamp/wildlife-themed warband

Lord of the Rings Elf Warband - another potential warband for fantasy skirmish games.

Whilst this lot took me a good while to sort out, I did have some painting success once these had been assembled and based:

More on these and the other completed items another time...

#6MMRPC - PLANNING STAGES

So, here's what I want to get finished over the next challenge:

1. SAGA - 4pt Viking force - probably the easiest task I have at the moment - I currently have 2pts of Warriors complete, with another 1pt Warriors, 1pt Hearthguard (Berserkers) and Warlord (the SAGA figure Jarl Sigvaldi, although he'll be a character of my own design).
   Notes: I actually have at least 2 Viking forces planned, based on the amount of miniatures I have for this faction (I recently got a load of Foundry Viking reinforcements and I'm currently the proud owner of around 15 Berserkers!)
2. Misc. - The Townsfolk - around 35 villagers from various ranges - Gripping Beast, Black Tree Designs, Reaper Bones etc. - the population of a Dark Age town (meant to be generally multi-use - I'd be happy to use them for Medieval townspeople or the villagers in Fantasy games (there are even a few figures in this project that are specifically fantasy-related)). I've recently made headway with these, with around 20 painted and awaiting proper basing. The others should be easy to work through.
3. Misc. - Livestock/Wildlife - a fun project currently in the works to fit with the town and for wilderness encounters - pigs, chickens, donkeys, wolves, dogs, bears, foxes, cats and more! This one is about 30% complete at the moment. Another fairly easy project to complete.
4. SAGA - 4pt Saxon force - currently 2pts of Hearthguard complete, with another 3pts of Warriors and 1pt of Levy planned. 
5. Lion Rampant (Game of Thrones) - Wildlings - this project is a recent upgrade from a warband of around 14 Wildlings up to a planned force of around 50. This mainly uses the Games Workshop Lord of the Rings range with various conversions.
6. Lion Rampant (Game of Thrones) - Nightswatch and Northern Allies - as above, focussing on conversions of Lord of the Rings figures.
7. Judge Dredd Miniatures Game - East-Meg 1 Judge Strikeforce - this is a starter box from Mongoose Publishing/Warlord Games, consisting of 6 Judges, a small spybot and a large robot. I may add to this faction when the time comes.
8. Judge Dredd Miniatures Game - The Angel Family - another starter box of 5 miniatures.
9. Judge Dredd Miniatures Game - CitiDef Squad 1 - a series of conversions of various Copplestone Castings Future Wars figures into a Block Defence Militia themed to a certain City Block.
10. Judge Dredd Miniatures Game - CitiDef Squad 2 - as above, but for another City Block - the idea being that one would ally with the East-Meg 1 invaders whils the other would remain loyal to the Justice Department.
11. Post-Apoc - this project will tie into the Judge Dredd Miniatures Game and consists of updating the basing and some detailing on a number of already completed squads/gangs of miniatures as well as completing a number of extras to round out these forces. Approximately 50 figures to rebase and 25 figures to paint from scratch.
12. Lovecraftian Horror Project - this will be similar in style/theme to the game "Strange Aeons" - a Government Agency tasked with hunting down summoned Elder creatures, stopping Cultists and the like. The Agency will be similar in scope to the BPRD from the Hellboy series - standard FBI-alike Agents plus more specialised "Consultants" - occult specialists, pulp heroes, local hunters etc. and the opposing forces will be cultists, Deep Ones, shoggoths and the like from various ranges. This is a brand new project for 2015 and will have a low-figure requirement.
13. Song of Blades and Heroes - TBD

This is a bit of a placeholder at the moment - these projects will get their own pages as part of the blog to show what's done and what is left to complete!

#6MMRPC mkII

I'm getting quite excited for the next 6MMRPC! This year, the challenge is going to start 01/06/2015 and run until 30/11/2015. Other than the date change, there are a few new additions to the guidelines - these are shown in bold text:

1. No purchasing of new miniatures, EXCEPT if you use a joker. You get three jokers to use on a figure purchase. Could be a blister pack, an ebay bundle, or a single figure...you can't splurge. The only exception to this rule is if you need bitz or A FIGURE (Singular) to complete a unit/warband etc.

1.1 - There is an opportunity to "earn" additional jokers. If you complete an entire project (whole unit/army/warband etc.) with pictures of starting, work-in-progress and completion, you earn yourself an additional Joker.

2. Gifts do not count against your Joker allowance - Holidays, birthdays etc. Also, if you're given gift cards by your hobby illiterate family or friends, you can without penalty use them on anything you want miniatures wise.

3. Paints, terrain (or materials), and other hobby supplies do not apply to the no purchasing rule.

4. At least one hobby related blog post and/or Instagram update a week. If you Instagram, be sure to hashtag your pic with #6MMRPC

5. Zomtober will be part of the 6 month challenge so, Zombie related stuff (or other horror-related stuff!) during October is encouraged. Other theme suggestions are welcomed.

6. Anyone that wants to submit a before and after picture of a miniature that they are proud of completing during the course of the challenge to dmcffd@gmail.com will be entered into the running for a gift certificate to a online wargaming store of their choice. Judging will be by an un-biased person. Amount on the gift certificate will be dictated by winners nationality but should work out to about $30 U.S. - this is a kind addition by Dave from Spiderweb of History.

One last thing I would say is that the Challenge is really more of a guideline - as shown with the participants last year, if any of these rules don't quite work for you and you need to modify them for yourself, go right ahead! The aim of the Challenge is twofold - 1) be a bit thriftier (I know I could do with curbing my payday eBay wargames habit!) and 2) complete some projects! This year, my aim is to complete a bunch of different warbands and armies, rather than odd figures here and there (although that's pretty fun too!) - more about my plans will arrive here soon!

The Challenge has already begun to pick up steam (I'm a little late to the party with this post!) and the Facebook page for members of the challenge has started to liven up a bit - you can join the discussion there!

6MMRPC Facebook Group

Thanks for reading! Get involved!

Recent Assembly...

I went a little mad on figure clean-up/assembly recently - here's a group shot of what I based up:

High Elves from the flashbacks in Fellowship of the Ring (plus Haldir!), a Formorian-turned-Goblin leader, a cowering Empire soldier, some metal Mordor Orcs who have been slightly converted to be added to my Game of Thrones Wildlings, the Moon Duke (at the back), an Oldhammer Manticore, Theoden and Gamling of Rohan, an ancient Citadel Gandalf and finally, an ancient Citadel Norse (to be used as a lower-level hero for my Vikings in skirmish games).

The Formorian started out like this, in a box of free Orcs and Gobbos from my mate...this was my favourite item in there and I had the perfect use for him...

I stripped the previous paintjob and cleaned up the moldlines, lopped off the halberd past his hand, found a donor staff from a Goblin shaman. I found him a suitable base (40mm in this case!) and cut a hole in it so the integral base would sit lower - easier than sanding it down or removing it. I added a spare GW rat and spiked skull to the base and I'll be adding sand and doing some slight gapfilling - he'll lead my Goblins from The Hobbit (I bought these to use as troglodyte mutants of some kind - he'll be the perfect leader for them!).

The Moon Duke - I love this miniature! The axe head was missing so I found a suitably classic-looking replacement from the original plastic multi-part Space Ork set. 

Finally, a closer shot of the Manticore - a lovely old Warhammer sculpt. He's small by modern standards, but the pose is suberb and he's got a lot of character - something the modern plastics seem to lack. The figure was an eBay purchase in a job lot a while back - I had to find a replacement tail and chose a plastic spike-ended tail/tentacle from the Chaos Spawn kit - I still need to finish up the join between the main body and tail. When I'm painting him the tail will get a sort of dripping-poison effect...

Comments most welcome - hopefully there'll be painted pictures sooner rather than later! I've spent most of today tidying through my boxes of unpainted/part-assembled figures/bits/sprues to get it into some semblance of order and it's still going to take a few more hours tomorrow!

Fantasy Skirmish - The Hierophant

Another recently finished figure, although, it was only a little bit here and there that needed completing - this character is the Hierophant of the metal GW flagellants I finished a while back. I realised that I needed a leader for them and discovered this wizard from the Reaper Bones range, which with a bit of converting would be perfect! His robes, the chains and the wild beard fit brilliantly alongside the other figures. He's also a bit bigger (see below) and there's also the cost to take into account - I bloody love the Bones range!

The original figure came with a bone-encrusted scythe, which looked a bit too evil. I replaced the head of the scythe with a mace taken from the GW plastic flagellants. I also trimmed the edges of the scroll he is holding up, as it was also in the shape of a bone. The hooded cape is another way that he's differentiated from the rest of his supplicants.

Here he is alongside one of his wild-eyed followers - I used a larger base for him in order to better encompass the robes.

Comments are most welcome as usual! Hopefully it won't be long until these gents are purging a graveyard or accursed temple!

Games Mat and completed Terrain

Huzzah! Terrain collection and games mat for historical gaming and perhaps more traditional fantasy all put together! I'm deliriously happy with this - everything here is brand new for January. The canvas gaming mat follows a great guide at Tobi's Paint Pot.

Things left to add:
- buildings - a number of Dark Ages houses and a pig sty to begin with - my plan eventually is to have enough buildings to play Song of Shadows and Dust but set in a Dark Age town
- more trees! I have another 5 bases of trees to complete at some point
- hills - I have the bases and foam, just awaiting the bark chips
- fences and walls

Phew! I also have around 25 Dark Ages villagers plus livestock assembled and undercoated to populate the settlement I plan to build and I want to put together some carts for the Vikings or Wildlings to ambush! Many plans! 

Here is my current SAGA Viking force making a shield wall on the new games mat and terrain.

Plague Marines

I decided last week that I fancied painting something a bit different to the normal humans and fantasy figures I've been on with recently - here's what I pulled out of the "undercoated/painting in progress" drawers...

The 3 sons of Nurgle that I finished - lots of rust, verdigris and grime, my favourite things to paint!

More to go!

These Plague Marines were undercoated with Halfords grey primer, but I decided that I wanted to start them from black. I then gave everything a heavy drybrush of Tin Bitz, followed by a drybrush of Boltgun Metal in a few areas (blades, guns, emblems, shoulder pad trims etc.) and followed that up with a verdigris wash over everything. I then selected 3 to try out my planned scheme, using VMC Hull Red for their armour plates, a pinky/brown mix for the boils and other nastiness, then drybrushing, and finally rust, muck, all that good stuff! I have a good few more to go and I need to build a leader for them from the Blightkings boxed set (a wonderful set - another Christmas present!).

Terrain - More stuff started!

My first wheat field using good old coir matting - I've already beveled and sanded the bases for another 3 of these - a really simple project to go along with a small Dark Age farmstead. Whilst I was on with the MDF bases for this I sorted out a bunch of small bases to make some rock likes from bark.

I bought a second-hand Garden of Morr kit back at the start of October - I decided to start cleaning it up tonight but decided to get rid of the silly amount of skulls on it. I love the GW terrain range, but they will insist on adding cartoony skulls to every empty spot. Inspired by sho3box, I'm going to remove all of the superfluous skulls of daftness. Some will just need removing, others will have paving sculpted in their place and some will be hidden by foliage. I'm looking to use this graveyard with lots of different genres - I'm happy enough with the gothicness, just not the cheese.

 

This will take a while.

 

Dreadfleet - Giant Sea Turtle Skeleton

My first completed piece from the Dreadfleet boxed set, approximately 4 years after getting the box as a Christmas gift! This manse on the back of a skeletal giant sea turtle is probably my favourite piece from the set! It's been painting in progress for around 3 years!

I've decided to finish off all of the lovely terrain and gubbinz from the set before venturing on to tackle the ships individually. My housemate seems particularly keen on this game so I should try completing this one soon!

Terrain - Woodzzz

I'm very happy to have added the flock to these in a painkiller-addled haze! They're going to dry overnight and then get brushed off to remove loose flock, various washes to tie everything together, some tufts and maybes flowers to detail and then a final tidy up...

I'm ready for these to be done. Hah! Next up is a canvas games mat and then a Dark Ages building of some sort.

Terrain - Woods - closer to completion...

Getting there! Everything is now drybrushed tan and stone grey, I'm about to unleash the PVA and flocks of various types!

I went back on the bases and added some rocks (out of woodchips) and some fallen logs (went into my garden and found some twigs) to give a bit more detail and stuff to work with when it comes to adding the detailing!

Terrain - Woods Continued...

Got a decent amount done with the first half of the tree stands today - base edges beveled with sharp scalpel blades and sandpaper, sand and gravel added with PVA, excess brushed off once dried, made a few inserts with rocks (wood chips) and then undercoated all of the bare MDF and sand/gravel black...

Tomorrow will be about basecoating them Scorched Brown, drybrushing tan and stone grey, then the fun stuff - flock, leaf litter (dried oregano?!), fallen branches and logs etc. etc.

As mentioned in the earlier post, I have another 5 bases of these to do - with those I'll need to apply the foliage to the branches, so that'll be more work (to say the least!) and then I want to make more rock inserts, some with smaller scaled trees (which came with the other trees purchased from eBay) so I'll need to get some more of the MDF bases to insert in the larger terrain bases (thinking of stuff like Hordes of the Things here!).

Figures Finished/Started Update

This is where I currently am with my Finished/Started stuff so far for January! Pretty damn happy with that so far! As mentioned when I first posted about this, credit for the idea goes to Ninjabread!

2015 Plans

So, my plans for 2015...

Dark Ages

• Complete another 2pts for my Vikings, plus a couple of the character/leaders I have
• Build a small Dark Ages village and paint the villagers/animals I have - I love the look of the Song of Shadows and Dust rules and I'd love to re-purpose them for disputes between rivals in a Dark Ages town
• Build a 4pt Saxon force - I got a box of the plastic Saxons for Christmas, plus I have a bunch of plastic Dark Age Warriors left over

Judge Dredd

• Build 2 rival Citi-Def gangs - these are inspired by the wonderful Citi-Def over on The Leadpile - I requested a couple of the sets he's used from Copplestone Castings for Christmas. 
• Assemble the Angel Gang - I got the new version of these from Warlord Games/Mongoose. I also want to have a scout through my misc. figure boxes to see if I have any other wasteland scum to join these, and will also be sprucing up some of the post-apoc figures I have to run a campaign in the Cursed Earth
• Assemble the East-Meg Judges - another Christmas present

Lovecraftian Mythos - this is a pretty new project...

• Lovecraftian creatures - these will be done in the same basing style that I use for the majority of my collection, meaning the creatures can be used in multiple genres. Creatures planned are Deep Ones (from Reaper Bones figures), a Shoggoth, Dimensional Shamblers and this creature from Pure Evil Miniatures
• Cult leaders, cultists and madmen - a mix of miniatures here, with the cultists coming from the Artizan Designs Thrilling Tales range
• Agents and misc. helpers - figures from Artizan, Copplestone (the Gangsters range) and Statuesque Miniatures

Darkest Dungeon - a planned fantasy skirmish/RPG based on the Kickstarted PC game - using all manner of figures from my Fantasy Skirmish stuff, with added characters from the games Player Characters:

• I already have a bunch of figures built and basecoated for this - it's just a case of getting them finished!

Phew. This barely scratches the surface on my plans! But these are some of my focuses for the next year...

Terrain - Woods!

I purchased the materials for this terrain project a while back - I ended up buying over a hundred trees from a Chinese eBay store and the lasercut MDF bases from another eBay store. I also had a couple of bases of Woodland Scenics deciduous tree armatures based up as post-apoc terrain (for dead trees) that I decided to remove from the original bases and repurpose for this project - they will get clump foliage eventually!

Most of the trees from the Chinese store are great, but needed some clean-up before I could glue them to the individual bases - this is par for the course though, as the moldlines on the WS armatures were pretty bad to be honest!

Hopefully I'll get sand/gravel on these soon so I can start to sort them out - I have another 5 bases to go (I'm going for a full woodland board at some point!) and I'm itching to get them game-ready! There's also a lot of smaller trees/bushes leftover from the eBay order that I'll be buying more bases to get them based up, particularly for use with my 10mm Hordes of the Things games and 1/72 Lion Rampant Game of Thrones plans!

2014 Re-cap

Well, this blogpost is a bit late, isn't it?

I've been meaning to write this for the past couple of weeks - a round up of the past year...

2014 was filled with the most gaming I've probably ever done - Hordes of the Things, Song of Blades and Heroes, Flying Lead, Pulp Alley, Munchkin and Munchkin Cthulhu, Kingslayer and Zombies!!! I've never been very concerned with the playing side of the wargames hobby - it's always been planned for a later date. That mindset changed this year, with the foray into various board and card games, with more games purchased for play in 2015 including Settlers of Catan and Cards Against Humanity. I've also joined a Dark Heresy group and my friend is setting up an introductory Dungeons and Dragons game.

At the start of 2014 I purchased a large amount of Warmaster figures from one of my gaming friends which lead to a couple of months of Hordes of the Things painting/modelling/gaming. I did get a nice horde of undead built up for this, with various forces left to complete.

I also attended my first non-GW wargames show, Vapnartak in February and added a few select figures to my collection and seeing some lovely display games.

Around the middle of the year my gaming circle had a number of games of Song of Blades and Heroes, using some brilliant scenarios that can be found at the Hour11Gaming blog based on the old Warhammer Skirmish scenarios.

I also started to pick up some miniatures for a Dark Ages/SAGA project, particularly a large collection from a friend who decided that he was going to concentrate on Warhammer 40k - I traded a bunch of Space Marine vehicles and got myself a Viking force with a number of characters.

Towards the end of 2014, IrishJaeger Dave and I decided that we needed to get the lead mountains under control and created the 6 Month Mountain Reduction Painting Challenge and invited our blog readers to join us. This has been pretty successful and it's great to see people posting up their completed stuff! October saw my annual participation in Zomtober, with the completion of my zombie horde getting ever closer:

My collection of survivors face off against the combined might of the horde!

I also went to the Leeds FIASCO wargames show in October, where I picked up a box of the Wargames Factory Male Survivors and split a box of the Female Survivors with one of my gaming friends.

Things slowed down towards the end of the year (I potentially had a bit of painting burn-out from Zomtober! Oh no!) and then I received a bunch of
wargames-related stuff for Christmas from family and friends!

Lead mountain replenished!

So, I leave you with an interesting method of finishing projects that you've started before moving along to the new shiny figure you just bought (Hobby Butterfly Syndrome)...

Inspired by Ninjabread, it's a simple way of keeping a tally of your miniatures, with the aim of keeping up a 2 to 1 ratio of finished to started figures. It's worked for me so far, prompting me to finish a bunch of figures from my drawers of painting-in-progress stuff. The board is one from a £1 shop and I'll alternate the colour of the drywipe marker at the start of each month, to keep track of how much is being finished/started each month!

Thanks for reading and thanks to those who have commented over the past years!

Merry Christmas Everyone!

Hello folks - just wanted to write a quick post to a happy holiday season to any of my readers! It's been an okay year - I'm looking forward to what 2015 will bring! I'm personally a staunch atheist, but Christmas is a lovely time to get together with my family, exchange gifts and eat lots of good food! Here's a few items of my holiday haul...

Dreadball Mars Attacks Martian team!

Lovely laser-cut MDF measuring sticks for SAGA 

East-Meg Judges set and a box of Saxon Thegns

This disgustingly lovely kit! Lots of interesting parts here - my plan is to build 5 different characters from these!

A small horde of Reaper Bones - the fish warriors will become Deep Ones and the misc. other stuff is for various RPG characters, plus a Giant for Of Gods and Mortals

I do have some other stuff that are currently hurtling through the warp to me, which is nice! Stuff for a Lovecraftian project plus some of the lovely Tengu Miniatures zombies (now sold by CP Models).

Did you get any holiday goodies?

Zomb-Apoc - The Whisperers

I love the latest enemies in The Walking Dead comic - I had to make them in miniature form! The basic idea is that they're camouflaged as walkers - they wear masks of zombie flesh (laced up at the back, like a luchador mask!) and lurk amongst the zombie hordes. Not a lot is known about them at this point in the comics, but my guess is that they sort of direct the zombie herds that have been shown now and then, walking amongst them (and communicating in whispers, hence their name - the Whisperers) and utilising the supplies left in the wake of a herd attack on a survivor group. They've been shown to mainly use knives and machetes, but one was shown to have a sawn-off shotgun. I've stuck to knives, pistols and sawn-off shotguns with these - I've put together another 5 to join these, although I may take them up to 15...

The parts for these are Wargames Factory plastic male and female survivors, plus a couple of Studio Miniatures plastic zombies and bits. A couple of the heads are from MaxMini, whilst the rest have had putty masks added.

Thanks for all the wonderful comments over Zomtober - I'm really behind on my Feedly reading list, but once I'm caught up I'll be commenting on everything I've missed out on in October!

Zomtober 2014 - Final Post!

I've been meaning to do this for a while now - get all of my zomb-apoc stuff together for a nice big horde shot! I don't think the survivors have much chance against that...

Moving forward, I'll be adding a few more things...

• Left 4 Dead-style "specials" - boomers, smokers, tanks, jockeys etc.
• Female zombies - at the moment, the majority of my horde is male - I'd like to even this up a bit! I'm not keen on the plastic Wargames Factory ones though, so any suggestions here would be nice!
• Survivors - there are a few more I'd like from Hasslefree, a bunch from Studio Miniatures (I've wanted the Wizard of Oz ones for ages now!) and I recently purchased a box of the male Wargames Factory survivors and split a box of the female ones with one of my wargaming mates.

I also need to really think about zomb-apoc terrain. I have a bunch of post-apoc stuff, but some more buildings, burnt out cars and some roads would go a long way to making games possible!

Comments are always amazingly useful! I always try to get around to responding to them as soon as possible!

Zomtober - Renovations

So, my zombie horde is coming along nicely and I'm down to the last 10 or so figures remaining unpainted - sadly, the bases of my older painted zomb-apoc stuff didn't quite fit with my more modern stuff. As such, I decided to dig them all out and rebase them!

Some of them needed new bases altogether - generally metal zeds and some survivors - I've really started to dislike slotta bases lately, so the Warhammer 40000 bases with no slot are the way forward! I weight them with coins to add a bit more heft too!

I got the previous basing materials removed from these and then my current mix of gravel then sand added.

Undercoated black, base paged scorched brown...

Drybrushed tan and light stone grey...

Ta daaaa! Flock added, excess flock brushed off with a toothbrush, base washed with a muddy/crap mix and the base sides painted black! Huzzah! All that's required now is some gore on a few figures here and there! I may get around to taking a full shot of my horde later today!