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!

 





 

 



 

Happy New Year

Right, I know I've been absent for a while.
Many excuses and reasons can be given (work, sickness, ...), but in the end I just didn't feel like posting.
It's not I've been completely idle though, a few games were played and miniatures painted, but a far cry from the progress I made for Bushido in May and June.
One of the things I like to do this year is to start posting again.

We have a plan to paint more. The idea is to play a lot of small campaigns which will challenge us to get a bit more painted before each game.
On top of this we plan to start with Bolt Action, expanding our forces a bit each month and painting the expansion in the same month as well, so we can play a campaign at the start of 2017.
I'm not really into historical games, but since a friend picked up the book at Crisis and he really wants to start with the game I'm willing to give it a try.

Here's a few things I have done at the end of 2015.
Most of it was speed painted because of a lack of time, but still acceptable in my opinion:

Pulp City:
A game I picked up in October and one where I recently backed a KS from.
The game is very interesting as there is a lot of interaction with the scenery, stuff to destroy or throw with. I really want to play a small campaign of this game, ... if only my starter sets and rulebook would arrive.

 

 

 

Guildball:

When I received my KS award and the Indiegogo mat, I couldn't resist to start painting these.

The miniatures are gorgeous and the rules refreshing.

At Crisis I played a demo game with a friend and must admit it was a blast.

Some of my friends even got a team of their own. I really look forward to start a season and expand my team in the near future.

 

Battletech:

It is a game I have for more than 5 years and haven't done anything with. Recently I viewed a lot of Ouchies batreps on YouTube and the game started itching.

Recently I played a first game with my brother and we both liked it a lot. Though it was the Green training scenario from, with only the basic rules, we look forward to play with the rules in the Introduction book.

the plastic miniatures in the box aren't great quality, so I didn't take a lot of time preparing or even resculpting. But I hope they look just good enough on the tabletop to motivate us to play.

As I liked the red (Kurita) vs green (Davion) setup of the Sword and Dragon campaign I went with these. The idea is to get enough painted to play both the scenarios from the introduction rulebook as the aforementioned campaign.

 

A few more games were played like Infernal (beta-rules from the KS), X-Wing and Bushido.

One game gets a honorable mention as we took pictures of it though, this was our first Heavy Gear game (it were actually two games as we switched sides after the first round).

The CEF got pummeled in both games, but it was clear my friend is the better tactician as he destroyed them all without suffering a single casualty in return and scoring the most VP.

The Hun and superior numbers of the South were a big problem for the hover tanks, even though they get two actions a piece. The single frame as also no more than an extra target and had no impact in either game.

Both the medium autocannon and bazooka were absolutely killers.







 

Game One:

I'm playing South, my friend Bram plays CEF.

 

setup

 

First movement

 

The CEF try to score some VP

 

My oldest son is watching as I shoot down a hover tank

 

Endgame

 

Game Two:

I'm playing CEF, my friend Bram plays South.

 

setup, my friend fans out his troops more to get the objectives faster and to deny the CEF some VP

We forgot to take some more pictures after this one. What follows is that my hover tanks approach from the right, while my frame tries to take the objective closest to him in the middle of the table.

The frame is gunned down first, by combined arms fire from the Jägers.

With the Hun resolutely hunting down the hover tanks, it was all over after turn three, two turns faster compared to me playing South.

 

That's about it for last year. I still have to get behind my painting desk in 2016, but I hope to get some time to paint some more soon.

Tapper for Guildball, some more mechs and minions for Pulp City, as well as my recently started Frostgrave group are high on my list.

 

Thank you for reading and best wishes to you all!

 

Wouter