Storage solutions

Like many people, I keep and display my minis in Detolf glass cabinets from Ikea. They're affordable and a good fit. For me that will be changing though, seeings as the back pane of one them exploded by itself last night. What saved most of my minis is likely that I had previously upgraded to plexiglas shelves. Not looking to buy another one of these after this experience. I woke up at about 5 am to a hellish bang and found the glass shattered and the shelf leaning over. Got the minis out, tilted it towards the wall and went back to bed. This morning was spent vacuuming glass shards and positioning the wreckage in such a manner that it wouldn't fall onto the other one which is still intact while I figure out what to do with it, and what my new storage solution will be. All the minis are currently on the living room table.

Oh joy.

"One Mojo found, will be relinguished in exchange for accurate description and location of dissappearance..."

I'm back! I've started painting again, after almost a year without doing much (I wasn't feeling like it at all for some reason). And let me tell you, it feels like I've forgotten a lot more than a years worth. Well, no matter. Chin to the chest and onwards to new dissapointments! I've been mostly testing the contrast paints, partly because I think they have potential and partly because significant portion of my regular paints have dried during my absence (that's my one complaint with Citadel paints - all of the previous ranges had phenomenal longevity and the current ones just die in their bottles when you turn your eyes from them. They're otherwise very nice, but the drying speed really grinds my gears. They're not even all that cheap to begin with, let alone when you have to constantly replace them.) and I've yet to properly assess the situation and restock.

As for what I've painted, a few Space Marines and some Necromunda monopose Goliaths. We're planning on starting a campaign with a few friends of mine, but two people in the group aren't doing their own minis (one is not interested in that aspect of the game, and the other one - while interested - is a student and has other priorities for their disposable income), so the rest of us are doing extra gangs as well.

Three little piggies and the big bad wolf.

There's still much for me to learn in using the contrasts (and relearn in using regular paints), but for the time they take I'm pretty happy with how the infantry tends to turn out. Contrasts and vehicles don't turn out as well though. All the large flat surfaces being the likely reason.

Old school Land Raider - no retro marine force is complete without one

Vindicator. I wouldn't normally include this in the army as it's too modern, but the dozer blade was too good to pass on (and to paint over). Mostly repainted second hand mini.

It's a bit of a dillemma with the vehicles. On one hand, the result isn't all that good, but on the other hand, I’ve never been good at painting vehicles anyway (so difference isn’t massive) nor ever really liked doing them (I've always felt most of the bigger models to be bit of a chore compared to infantry) and it's much faster with contrasts. I painted both the Land Raider and the Vindicator yesterday, while it usually takes me whole weekend or longer for one vehicle with regular paints. A bit worse results much quicker and with less chore-painting, or a bit better (but still bad) results much slower and with more chore-painting? Decisions, decisions. Luckily I can focus on the smaller stuff and leave the vehicles mostly be - two more ready for the army should suffice for a while.

One Space Marine, Two Space Marines, Three Space Marines...

The subject of this post is counting. Specifically, counting painted miniatures. Last year I decided to start counting my painting to get an idea of what I manage in a year. This was inspired by many people in hobby groups doing similiar counts (from what I've seen seems to be a fairly common practice), and by my personal like of statistics of all kinds (I know it's weird, please don't hit me). Obviously I wasn't going to hit the awesome several hundred painted miniatures a year some people do, being a fairly slow painter, but I figured I'd give it a shot. Well, what was the count then?
Somewhat unimpressive, I must confess.

In 2018 I painted from scratch 47 miniatures, 5 of which were bigger vehicles or monsters, and finished, fixed, or touched up 138 second hand miniatures, 6 of which were bigger vehicles or monsters (I've bought several bigger lots last year). The amount of work done on each of those varies a lot, but most were on the smaller side, so I'm going to assign a calculatory value of 1/10 to each of these, arriving at calculatory total of 60 (rounding down) painted miniatures in 2018.

I think I'll aim for 100 for 2019. In other news, I've started a new project (not enough of those around, obviously) - Lizardmen. They were what first drew me to Warhammer, but what little I painted as a kid was horrible, and my cousin and (then) only opponent was more into 40k so they got boxed up and forgotten. Well, no more! I think I'll make a post on them when I finish the first unit. Well, that's that. Happy new year 2019!

The season of lethargy

The season of merriment is upon us once again. Unfortunately in Finland it's also the season of darkness, cold, darkness, wet and darkness, and all of their lovely variants such as cold darkness or cold and wet darkness. Some people are affected by this while others aren't. Alas, I am part of the former rather than latter group, and as such have had my energy sapped and spirit stamped by the cruel mother nature. I always get borderline lethargic during autumn and winter, and consequantely haven't had much drive for anything really, including my hobbies. The only painting I've done is some Roomans (more on those in a future post once I have them all painted) and some fixes on the Eldar army. I do follow things though, and I'm pretty happy with the combined rulebooks being released for Necromunda. I already have the gang war books, but I'll be getting the new ones as well due to the convenience factor. December White Dwarf was packed with extras aswell, Delaques rulebooklet and  extra cards for several games, including Dice Masters (which I also play), which was pretty nice. The card is actually pretty good too.

The White Dwarf himself - and he's angry at you!

I also got another game of Necromunda in a couple of weeks ago which was nice. Won this time.

Suzy and the Slayers faced off against their old foe, the bounty hunter posse going by the name Aver's Gits as they were trying to escape through Slayer territory. Aver himself sneaked off right away, leaving his associates to fend for themselves. The Slayers held their positions, peppering the escaping bounty hunters with las and slug at every turn. The damage, though, was light. Despite several wounded only Borg went out of action, choking on a gas trap set by May. On the other side of the zone Lefty proved himself not above kicking a girl when she's down, putting Fio out cold. She survived, but needs resting. Seeing their leader leave them and their comrades bleeding out, the Gits broke and bottled out. Despite being victorious the Slayers felt like they gained little (most of which was bruises). The Gits however had their reputation swell for survivng against the mighty Slayers.

This time there was more terrain.

Kasumi, May and Anja guarding one of the chokepoints the Gits needed to pass through.

Future on the Pacific

It's been a bit quiet on the hobby front for the last couple of weeks for me. The big EastFront game is always fun, but it tends to suck the juices out of you real good. The next weeks are really busy as well, so it might be that I won't have time for much in the near future either, altough I hope that doesn't turn out to be the case. I have evening shift the whole next week so no time to play, but hopefully I'll be able to get a game of necromunda in the week after that. Or maybe Pacific Victory, which arrived yesterday.

Pacific Victory, 2nd edition

All the blocks, put in the stickers yesterday.

I haven't had the chance to read the rules yet, but they're pretty short at a bit over ten pages, so that shouldn't be a problem. The game is pretty colourful with the addition of Chinese blocks to the second edition and the Kickstarter version having separate colour blocks for UK and ANZAC (brown). I'm missing one blue extra block, but I might not do anything about that since it's not necessary for the game and it'd be pretty ridicilous to send one (1) wooden block all over the world. Or maybe I'll ask Columbia Games to put it in my next order (let's face it, there's bound to be one). Anyhow, can't wait to get gaming!

Setting up a Lair

Alrighty then. This is the first of what I hope to be many posts about the things I do on my free time. Mostly this will focus on miniatures (particularily of the Oldhammer variety) and miniature games, but I'll also be writing about other things such as boardgames from time to time.

The reason for setting up a blog is mostly to document the things I do, and also to get things going on the hobby front again - I haven't really been "feeling it" all that much lately when it comes to minis and though this might serve as an interesting way to change that. I've never run a blog before, altough I did used to have a plog (project log) of dubious quality on Warseer.com, but several factors including but not limited to; Warseer suffering several months long periods of downtime, my being self conscious about my painting being horrible, being forced into bed rest for nearly two months due to badly breaking my ankle in February 2017, and Warseer's general slow burning death, led to me abandoning the plog entirely. My painting is still not all that good, but it is better than it used to be and I'm less self conscious about it. I will also be posting pictures of minis not painted by me and also only partially painted or fixed by me aswell, since I tend to keep the paintjobs on second hand minis that are painted well enough unless I have something specific in mind for them. Sometimes I also get minis specifically for the paintjobs. This has been an introduction of sorts, which I will be following with a proper mini post either later today, or in a few days if I get stuck doing other things.

It seems pictures are all the rage these days, so here's one of my painting station.