Dodgy Knees.

I realise that I've been very quiet lately - a slight explanation: I've suffered with knee problems all of my life - I've had 6 operations that have basically temporarily patched up the issues in both knees without actually solving them. I struggle with them daily and take painkillers to try and manage it - lately, the pain has been a lot worse. I'm going back to the doctors tomorrow to see about a referral back to a orthopaedic consultant, but in the past few weeks I've been a bit withdrawn and anti-social. I couldn't even quite concentrate on painting to be honest - I'd sit at my desk, pretty much staring at the many undercoated figures. Recently though, I've started playing Song of Blades and Heroes on a regular basis, with my housemate and then my gaming mates (housemate's younger brother and step-father!). It's actually been brilliant to get back to regular gaming - it's really made me focus a bit and get some of the lovely figures in my painting backlog completed... 

I've been off sick from work the past few days, and I've got a nice chunk of painting completed - I've had a load of miniatures built and undercoated for my Fantasy Skirmish project for a while now, and I've been adding to the regularly from the lead mountain (and eBay...). It'd been a while since I'd completed anything, so I decided to set myself a little challenge - complete at least 25 of the undercoated miniatures before assembling any of the other stuff...

As of tonight, I'm currently up to 16 miniatures completed! I've just had some lovely figures arrive in the post (Copplestone-sculpted Barbarians on horse and some shamans (inspired by a fantastic blog - more on this in another post!) and 12 of the Heroquest human troops (who will become a town guard for some scenarios in SoBH), who did get clipped from their slotta bases and shields removed, but work halted there...), so I will be setting to work on more undead tomorrow to get up to the 25! I enjoyed painting the beastmen - I started out with the normal grey primer, washed the full figures in thinned brown to basecoat, painted their bases black then scorched brown, followed by an all-over drybrush of tan then light stone grey. It left a perfect base to start with - I was so happy that I've ended up doing the exact same for all of the undead that are due to be painted soon! 

• I dislike doing a text-only post, as I know eye candy is always better, but I'm posting this from my phone and it doesn't seem to want to play nice - check out my Instagram linked from the sidebar for pictures of the things I've been working on today!  Call back soon for content-dripiping posts!

Zomtober 2013 - Week 4 (belated...)

Again, better late than never! This is a Hasslefree Miniatures infected version of "Grant", mutated into a hulking creature. I'll be using him my zomb-apoc as a sort of "tank" zombie, but in Left 4 Dead terms he's more of a Charger. He's been finished for around a week (alongside not-Milla and the Hasslefree female survivor and not-Shaun, but they're lacking blood/gore and final details) but I've been preparing for a Halloween house party (which happened last night and was bloody brilliant!), meaning my hobby time has been somewhat shortened whilst painting masks, building wands (I went as a Death Eater from Harry Potter), fixing robes and making decorations for the house! I turned a cardboard box into a graveyard (running up the stairs) and made lots of other bits and pieces - I may post about this later in the week...

All in all, I've loved Zomtober - it allowed me to really get a good chunk of my zomb-apoc miniatures completed and it's spurred me on to play some zombie survival games sometime soon. I've also loved the output from the other blogs participating in it - really great stuff! I'll certainly be participating again next year - I'll also be putting together a round-up post to show everything I've completed in the last month!

Apologies.

Sorry for my lack of proper updates lately! I've been fairly busy in real-life working lots of overtime in order to build up money to complete my driving lessons (and to put some aside for my first car!).

I've been posting quite regularly on Instagram - you can find me here - @deserter86. I love the format and it's a lot easier to use than the Blogger application - it's also nice and quick to take shots on the workbench or to post interesting artwork/misc nerd stuff. Do you have an Instagram account? Feel free to post it in the comments on this post!

I have a good twenty posts backed up with more WIPs and PIPs to show shortly! I'm also planning a game pitting a force of Raiders versus a force of Vault-Scavengers - more of this soon!

Merry Christmas (and all that jazz)

Another quick post - I'm getting a bit rubbish at this blogging malarkey! I have about 40 completed miniatures and a load of work-in-progress stuff to post up, lots of draft posts and nothing posted for nearly 3 weeks - rubbish!

"I recognise my failing, and will be sure to correct it."

I just wanted to say Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to all - whether you're celebrating the "reason for the season" (I'm not...) or just look upon it as a time to spend time with your family and eat lots of good food and receive a few nice presents (like me, the staunch atheist!), I hope you have a bloody good day!

As for presents, I'm reliably informed that my mam and dad have got me Dreadfleet, so painting that up will be a nice project over the course of 2013!

Happy Holidays faithful readers!

The Nerd Room

Just a quick walkthrough the semi-complete Nerd Room in the new house...

This corner is generally book and army storage - along with the nice big window. I want a new venetian blind on there instead of the black roller blind, as it'd be a bit more private and allow some shade during the day...
I really need to sort through the KR miniatures cases, see if anything is to sell and basically, work out what I have for which factions and setting.

The work area. I wouldn't normally have the two wrist rests, just the one - I find it helps when I'm at work or painting at home - I'd been taking one to work and back, but decided to buy another just to leave there. There's also quite a bit of storage for tools and bits here, some decent lighting and easy access to the laptop for films/tv shows and the internet.

The storage end - terrain in one corner, loads of projects in the other. The clear plastic boxes need sorting through, things need de-spruing and putting in baggies until they're needed - generally needs a big sort out! It's tidy enough for now (the boxes normally stack on top of each other). I finally retrieved the display cabinet from when I lived at my parents too - it'll be used for display miniatures and whatever warbands/teams I'm using at the moment. Also pictured is my Citadel painting tray, which I actually use when sitting watching movies in the lounge, for de-spruing and cleaning up miniatures. It currently has some lizardmen on there, an eBay junk lot that I'll turn into a nice little warband.

The gaming bench is still a work in progress - it'll be attached to the wall above the silvery-grey box in the bottom corner. My dad is still on with that...

AWOL.

I'm sorry for my absence as of late - I'm still waiting for my internet to be connected in the new house. I've got lots of finished miniatures to show from the weeks before I moved, so hopefully I'll be able to show those off shortly! I'm currently planning out my new wargames table - a 42" square board that will be fixed to one wall, with legs at the other end. This will suit the Zuzzy mat that I have (3ft square) or my wargames boards (4ft square) nicely! And hopefully I'll be able to post some after-action reports in the next few months...

Well, I'm moved.

I moved into the new house on Thursday - there's still a lot left to do before it's sorted! My new desk is the perfect size for the new room - I love eBay! Here's the current state of my nerd room:

Moving...again!

Once again, I am moving home! This is why the blog has been so quiet recently - with all the stress of sorting out the move, I've just had no energy or enthusiasm for blogposts, despite having loads of content just waiting a write-up! One brilliant part about finally moving though - I get a nerd room! 

I'm currently in a two bedroom apartment with a flatmate - this was great when we moved in, but my bedroom is the smaller of the two, meaning I took over the dining area table along with a bunch of storage in the rest of the apartment. Not ideal. The other major thing taking up space at the moment is the amount of gym equipment we have in the apartment - a home gym/weights machine, treadmill, exercise bike and some free weights. We need more space for this.

So, we've found a detached, four-bedroom, large garage, large garden house! This is brilliant - I will have a nice big bedroom, plus a full spare room of my own - this will be my hobby/nerd/reading room. I have already purchased some nice new bookcases and a lovely big desk (both eBay!) and will be having a trip to Ikea for lots of storage! I'll also have a garden to maintain, meaning multiple herb planters and lots of vegetables in the summer. Finally, the garage is perfect to become a home gym - the current plan is to clean it out, wash everything down, paint the walls white, have some fans attached to the walls, some mirrors in there for lifting form and foam matting on the floor.

Evidently I'm over the bloody moon about this! Moving day is tomorrow!

Turn's out, Shelob's son just moved into my apartment building...

I'm sure this guy doesn't look too big to readers in the parts of the world where humongous spiders are commonplace, but this is a scary bugger for a person in the UK! Massive by our standards! Seen on a post-midnight trip out to the communal bins...

The Angler

Another photo from my recent trip to the aquarium - an exhibit featuring a brilliant Anglerfish model. I loved that as I was reading the information alongside the exhibit, a child asked his mother: "Do they bite people?!" to which she replied, full of knowledge: "They don't really come into contact with humans - they live too deep in the ocean to bite them. They probably would if they could, though...".

Great to see a parent with some knowledge!

Poorly Starfish...

I went to a local aquarium a week or so ago - thought this plucky little guy would interest my readers!  

A belated Goodbye to 2011...

Time for a look back over 2011 and whether or not I've achieved my aims from the start of last year...


First, a recap - this post from January 2011 summed up what I had planned for the year.


In general, I had a few different real-life aims;

• Move out of my parents house - done. I moved into an apartment with a friend at the start of 2011, so this one has worked out rather well!
• Build some self-esteem/be more healthy - this has not really progressed over the past year. If anything, I have more access to rubbish food in the town I've moved to. Definitely one of my main aims for 2012. It's about time.
• Get a social life - if I'm honest, I've just about maintained this from the previous year - I had thought that moving into my own place would mean that my friends could visit more often, for Xbox, films, food and drink, but this was not always the case. I'd moved for work, which meant I was slightly further away from my main group of friends. This has highlighted my desperate need for a car - a new aim for 2012. Being out of work for a few months of 2011 and changing jobs a total of 3 times in a year left me feeling slightly isolated (brought about by self-imposed hermitage...). Thankfully, this began to change in the last months of 2011.

Wargames-wise;

• Play more games - this was dismal. That changes this year though, with my main Resolution of 2012 - PLAY MORE. Be it Xbox, Monopoly or Warhammer 40k, I want to play more, have more fun!
• Plan armies before modelling - this is something I explored slightly in 2011 with the 500pts Imperial Guard list I built from the scrap Catachans. I quite enjoyed writing the list and converting figures with a sense of purpose - definitely the way forward in the new year.
• Sell what I don't need - I did sell a few different things during the year - to be honest, I'll probably always be a hoarder (although, I bloody hate mess/clutter!) and my head is always brimming with ideas for multi-purposing miniatures, or recycling them into new gangs/warbands/forces. Definitely one of my favourite parts of the hobby!
• With regards to painting, not a lot has changed. I do tend to use the wet palette that I picked up at the start of the year - that was interesting to work with. I can think of a few things to work on over the next 12 months...

So, overall? I'm fairly happy with that. I absolutely HAVE to finish learning to drive, pass my test and buy a car this year. It's an imperative. I just don't see my family (parents, sister and grandmother in particular) and friends ("The Scooby Gang") enough - I can also think of so many museums and interesting places I'd love to go once transport is better available! So, my main resolutions - PLAY MORE - LEARN TO DRIVE - SEE MORE.

Thanks to everyone who reads my blog - it's been a quiet couple of months, but the next few months will be more interesting! I'm actually planning on going to the local games club tomorrow, for the first time since moving to this town - should be rather interesting!

New Job - Again! Huzzah!

Well, bit of news in my real life! I have ANOTHER new job! But one I actually enjoy! I'm very pleased about this - I had an interview last Tuesday, was given the job on the same day and started on Monday! I am now the  Customer Service Manager of a local printing company, with a pay bump and less distance to travel each day...


I am over-the-moon!

Bit of news...

Nothing particularly special about this post, other than having a date to start my new job! Hurrah, huzzah and other such exclamations of happiness! I start Monday coming, working 9-5 for the next 6 weeks and then similar hours following that. I am overjoyed! 


In other news, I'm currently having a big spring (summer, even) clean - I wanted to get my miniature horde in some semblance of order before starting the new job - wargames miniatures had taken over my wardrobe and I could never find the stuff I wanted! In doing so, I've kept all of my Warriors of Chaos stuff to one side - I'll be assembling these over the next few weeks, as Storm of Magic has rather intrigued me!

What I've been upto: Real Life Strikes!

I've been rather busy over the past few weeks with the job-hunt - various appointments, preparation sessions and interviews, be they telephone or face-to-face, have left me with zero energy for blogging! I have actually managed to do a decent amount of painting with a nice chunk removed from the "undercoated and ready to paint" pile, which I'm going be posting up over the next week.

On the job front, I have actually been successful! Pending various admin bits and pieces, I should be starting training in the next couple of weeks for a customer service job on mortgages and loans for a well known bank. I literally couldn't be happier about this! Well, other than if it was a interesting job in a museum or somesuch...


So, basically, keep checking back for some interesting and more substantial updates!

Approaching things from a slightly different direction...

So, the Wyches have finished in their bath of Fairy Power Spray, they've been re-based and now, re-undercoated in white...

I've also finally picked up a wet palette from eBay. I've been meaning to pick one up for years, but finally went ahead and purchased it to work on the Dark Eldar. Who won't be too dark...

Both the white undercoat and the new palette are an attempt to try something a bit different - I'm wanting a very particular style with the Dark Eldar, rather pastel but with some lovely blood splatters, hopefully these will help towards that.

In entirely unrelated news, I actually finally managed to join a gym! I had my induction yesterday and I plan on going back today for some more cardio. Anything that helps me lose some weight and build up my knees will be brilliant!

100th Post...

Well, once again, it's been a while! I'm going to keep it short and sweet this time, but as the title states, this is my 100th blogpost! Things have been rather slow lately, and I wanted to get a nice chunk of stuff finished to post up as a bit of a preview of the next couple of weeks of posts...

How's that for a nice chunk of painted goodness then? Everything was work in progress, generally at the undercoated or basecoated level before I moved here, but it's really come together in the past week or so. I've had a little time off work ill with a chest infection, so inbetween bouts of coughing I managed to get a few miniatures finished.


More detailed posts will follow, along with some newly assembled conversions, some older conversions yet to be shown but moved up in the queue, and, eventually - game reports!


Thanks to everyone that has subscribed, and sorry that things have been a little bit quiet as of late - back to our regularly scheduled blogpostings!

No Time

Well, it truly has been a slow start to the year, miniatures-wise!

As the post the other day said, I've moved fine and the apartment is just about sorted. All we really need is to get a decent internet package and a bigger television and it'll be fantastic. As it stands, we have a rather small 16inch TV, which really isn't great. Especially when I'm used to playing games on a projector!


So what have I been doing for the past week?

This was the speed dial of the phone on the desk I was working on last night at work.  Amused me greatly!

Work. 


That's about it really.


I started some new hours as of February 1st, so I'm generally a bit too tired to do anything when I get in, or busy on my days off, so I haven't had much time to myself as of late. I was looking forward to having Sunday off and maybes getting some paint on some Dark Eldar, only to be informed that there is a family christening to attend - that should be fun anyway, but there's a good chance I'd rather be sat in my underpants watching cartoons and painting little toy soldiers.


I suppose there's always next weekend...

Moved.

Finally! 

Four trips with my dad's decent sized van looking like the one above. My room and the main bathroom are basically sorted and I've collapsed into my beautifully comfortable new bed, whilst the living room-come-kitchen is a bit of a warzone. It's nigh-on 5am here, I've passed the shattered-need-sleep zone and I'm into the "look at silly internet stuff" zone. Sigh.


Normal service will resume shortly - I have a thousand and one projects on the go!

Delayed.

Bugger.
Just had news from the letting agency - the referencing is finally sorted, but they need to do an "inventory" of the apartment before we can move in, so it's going to be Wednesday instead. Not so bad - I mean, we'll still have use of my dad's van on Wednesday, and I've still got a bunch of things to get packed up. I may even be able to get the day off work, albeit at short notice...


Still rather happy!