Back from the dead

Well, not really. But I've been neglecting this blog for about a year.
So I might as well have been.

It's been one year with a lot of ups and downs.
In February my youngest son got seriously ill without a known cause and had very high fevers.
Luckily he got stronger over the year and he's gotten very resilient.
July was another month with a large impact on  my hobby time as I got a promotion at work.
While I'm still happy with it and give it my all, it leaves me with less hobby time than before.
However, the main reason I stopped blogging is the fact I got seriously disappointed in my own painting skills.
This left my hobby in a state total chaos during March and April, where I started a multitude of project and failed to finish even one of them.
My painting is getting slow and sloppy and I'm not making any progress at all skillwise, which I find highly frustrating. The result is I'm not painting much right now and there are often long periods of inactivity between short bursts of painting frenzy.

My first burst was in June, when I discovered the Battle Fleet Gothic computer game.
Almost at the same time one of the Bloggers (Modhail) I'm following showed off his painted Eldar fleet. Before I even realized it I had challenged him to a game.
 Also, turns out he lives not that far away over the border.
I frantically started searching for the rules and miniatures I hadn't touched in more than a decade and was very pleased to notice I had even more miniatures than I remembered.
Some were unfinished though and most of them needed some touching up.
With a deadline (the game) to work towards I repainted some parts I didn't like and finished some of the ships. At the time I last played there was no Armada, so I modelled my rather large unfinished kroozers in battleships.
At the moment there are still a lot of unpainted ships on my desk. But I hope to finish these whenever I feel like painting.
The rest isn't that well painted, but as I was in a rush I didn't strip the paint on them but simply repainted some parts of them to make them more Deathskull.

 This is my Hammer class Battlekroozer, which was an unfinished Kill Kroozer conversion.

 And the Deathdeala, made from a terror kroozer conversion I once started.

 

We played a few games and I must admit it was a bit of a learning experience as Orks aren't the easiest race to play with. But I won a few games and I will remember the battle where my Deathdeala rammed and boarded an Imperial Emperor class battleship (with a result of 5 to 35), breaking the thing almost in two and annihilating the crew, fondly for a long time.

It was also a very pleasant meeting and we decided to play some more games together.



 

Another game me and my regular opponent Bram picked up again was Briskars.

I've had a hard time with the started set before and I did again in the game I played; so it was time for some expansions. They have yet to see the field of batlle though.

During our games I really felt I needed some more long distance weapons as the starter set is focussed on three melee fighters. Hence I painted up some sturdy artillery members of the Outcatst faction, which will hopefully give me an edge next time we play the game.

 

This birgus royal (which is the name of the crab-people) is actually an artillery piece also, as he can hurl melee fighters into combat or enemy figures away from him).

And this birgus was the last unpainted member of the starter set. I don't think this is the best of sculpts, but he's a useful member with his long range melee weapon.
Normally he stands on four legs, but as this leaves a huge gap between his front and hind legs I gave him an extra set. Another reason is the fact the birgus royal does have six legs and they are the same species, as well as the fact he is pictured with six legs on the cover of the rulebook.

 

Last but not least I painted some Wasteman miniatures as I mean to play the game with my oldest son. He's only six, but interested and the game itself is rather simple.

The Wasteman miniatures were a bit rough, but after a bit of cleaning up I think they look okay, though I should have given them a matt varnish.

My first idea was to get theme in, which was to be 'flags of around the world'. This didn't work well on the nurse though, so I dropped the idea.

 

 This guy also has a Ghoul T-shirt in the official scheme which I liked a lot.
Remembering the fact there are also ghouls in Fall Out, I gave him a ghoulish appearance.
Funny enough he is one of the few members of the group without the cannibal skill.

 The nurse with the bronzed skin. Don't trust her though, she's a cannibal as well.

This guy I struggled the hardest with as I had no idea how to paint him. There are so many different kind of materials and surfaces it makes it hard for everything to match up. In the end I decided to go for a bit of a Yin-Yan effect with a 'Hello Kitty' apron and a 'Devil's best man' T-shirt.

 

 

With the possibility of me and my family moving to Australia en 2017 I started cleaning up my collection and I've already sold a lot of stuff I don't plan on using anymore or haven't used at all.

Among these is my Blood Bowl teams and game. The game and a few teams have already been sold, but my converted lizardmen team and some other mini's needed some finishing touches first, which is why I painted these fellows:

 

 

That's it for this post.

Happy holidays everyone, starting with a merry Christmas!