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...

Busy busy busy!

I've actually got a lot of miniatures finished recently, but I've decided to take nice pictures on terrain and add a little bit of background - in no particular order:

• Aruk - an alien warrior (ogre-sized) from the Cobalt-1 sci-fi range (with some converting).
• Not-PC Danny from Hot Fuzz (to hunt zombies) from Hasslefree Miniatures.
• Not-Marv from Sin City (same), also from Hasslefree Miniatures.
• Ghoul gunslinger from Copplestone Castings.
• The Ogre from Reaper Miniature's Bones line. More on this particular guy in a future post.
• A Horrorclix Shoggoth rebase/repaint.
• Thrullg from Hordes - a swamp beast that feeds on magic. I'll be using it as alien fauna in Rogue Trader-esque games.
• A not-Gears of War Marine-type. Painted as a Vault (Fallout) Security guard.
• Last, but not least, a vampire-hunting post-apoc cyborg sheriff. Yeah. One of my favourite ever conversions.

I also dug out my Dark Eldar and various other figures, and currently have the following Painting-in-Progress:

• 10 Dark Eldar Warriors - I ended up changing the sand/gravel mix on these. They've gone from bare plastic to the above stage.
• 5 Hellions - mostly basecoated. I've gone with silver/metallic skyboards to avoid the mauve overload...
• Haemonculus (the special character). He's now basecoated.
• Evil Not-Batman (a Heroclix conversion, rebase and repaint).
• The Mime (a Horrorclix conversion, rebase and repaint).
• Doc and Wabbit, two Copplestone Castings post-apoc characters.

Quite a bit to look forward to, right? Comment below to let me know what completed minis you'd like to see first!

I decided to get the Dark Eldar finished as I like the idea of playing a shantytown vs vicious alien invaders.

Also, the new 40k boxed set looks brilliant. I must have 100 autogun cultists!

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!

Moving Tuesday

At least, Tuesday is the plan! The let is agreed (I "squeeee-d" with delight when I went on the webpage of the apartment I'm about to move into and I saw the little green "Let Agreed" icon on every photo...amazing!) and it's just a matter of all the paperwork going through as soon as possible - hopefully today (Monday). I'm just on packing up a few more bits and pieces, sorting out what games stuff I'm going to take to begin with.


Visual proof of progress...

DVDs are gone, more books are gone, the wardrobe has been emptied and painted white, the vast majority of my clothes are bagged in the green super-strength garden waste bags.


At the moment I'm planning on taking:

• Space Hulk - I have 5 Termies, 10 'stealers and the playing pieces painted - lots more left to do here.
• The pile of basecoated miniatures - lots of AE Bounty stuff, some post-apoc, some Dark Eldar Wyches. These were all on my desk whilst packing up.
• A big box of Imperial Guard - all in bits, but I recently had a tidy out and stock take. Basically went through all of my horded Guard/generic human bits and sorted them into various bits trays (well, the kind of plastic freezer boxes you get takeaway in) and I now have it all sorted into torsos, legs, left arm, right arm, weapons, heads, extras. That took a while. I love the Guard and have been hording stuff for this project since the year before the new IG codex was released. There is well over a hundred infantry, 3 Russ and 10 Sentinels. Lots of work.
• The latest stuff I bought - the zombapoc stuff and a bag of Quar!

Plus the obvious assorted tools and paints.

Plenty to start with I think! The Space Hulk and zombapoc stuff is likely to be used first, so they'll be the priority, with the AE Bounty stuff next up.

I've also just ordered another 2 Kaiser Rushforth figure cases, taking me upto 3 KR and 1 GW. Should be enough (to keep me going anyway) so I can transport most of my collection over!

Bed time I think!