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!

Another bright eyed youth chosen by the thug life

This weekend I finally managed to take the time to convert and paint a mini for the latest addition to the Slayers, a juve named Anthea. She's been proxied by another, dead, juve for the last two matches because I didn't have a mini for her, but that's sorted now.

Front

Back

It's a fairly simple conversion, just a weapon swap and new hair and skirt from green stuff/milliput (I mix them together, gets the best of both worlds). The skirt ended up a bit on the scrappy side, but overall I'm pretty happy with it. Besides, it's not like they have good clothes in the underhive anyway, right? That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

The original miniature

Front before paint

Back before paint

This is the first time I've ever done anything but basic assembly or slot filling, etc.with either green stuff of milliput (My previous conversions have pretty much all been kitbashes, bit swaps or pose changes, which don't require any sculpting - such as it is), and I definately feel like I've learned more about it. Still very difficult though, and I continue to be baffled by the stuff some people put out. The skirt turned out a bit rough, and kinda looks like some sort of weird puffy trousers when viewed from the front, but the hair turned out much better. 

Trouble in the Underhive

Suzy and the Slayers faced the off against the Red Groin Rags from House Orlock. Despite deployement rivaling any Imperial bureaucrat and even the House leaders sending the gang a new Juve Anthea, the rags quickly found better firing positions than the slayers and proceeded to pepper them with waves of pinning weapons fire and all too many explosions. Ripper Jack De Felici managed to drop Kasumi after entagling her with his chains. The favour was soon returned though when Helga flattened Smokes Del Giorno with her heavy stubber. Anja spent most of the encounter locked in long range duel with Autogun Edwin, receiving much more than she gave in return, fortunately staying on her feet despite several bullet wounds. Unfortunately for the slayers Iron Hand Di Bernardi blasted Rosa and Irina off their heels with his blasting charge. When this was followed by underhive fauna (lured in the by the Groin Rags' unwashed loincloths) beating Eri senseless, Suzy made the wise and prudent choice to advance to better defensive positions and the gang legged it, leaving the worthless wasteland to the Orlocks. Luckily enough, only Irina was forced into bedrest with everyone else making a full recovery.

"Pinned" was the word of the day.

 Yesterday I had a Necromunda game at my FLGS - there's a store campaign going on for the control of the Myhr Manz sector of Underhive (Tietäjät tietää - an ancient finnish proverb). I was facing off against Red Groin Rags from House Orlock. The orlock player won the roll off and got the better table edge and caused me great problems with his grenade launcher, but I held my own until my girls started getting pinned left and right and dropping like flies and after getting three gangers and one champion out of action (luckily none of them were permanently maimed or died) and one ganger severely wounded I decided to cut my losses and bottled. Fair's fair and I lost - my gang was weaker (not by much though, to be fair) and made some errors I could have avoided (deployed Helga and her Heavy Stubber in the wrong spot for example, which lead to many turns of wasted shooting), but I do think out terrain was working against me a bit. There was a Killteam game going on at the same time as our match and they had arrived earlier and taken most of the suitable terrain, which left our board somewhat lacking in height and with wide open areas which meant it was difficult for me to close the distance and favoured the opposing gangs well entrentched shooters. Fun was had though, which is the main thing, and luckily none of the ladies dies. Now I just need to paint a new Juve before the next match!

Wooden Boxes

Another quick update, this time on another awesome second hand model. I just got it varnished (just to be sure), so I thought I'd share it with you guys. I present to you, a Khorne Berzerkers / World Eaters rhino:

Notice anything yet?

"Nice greenstuffing there, but what makes this so special?", you may ask. Well, first of it's completely scratch built. Secondly, it's made out of wood. I bought this from the same guy I got the Rogue Trader Dreadnought that made an appearance in the earlier post (also bunch of variant armour marines, but I haven't painted those yet). It was made by a friend of his back in the day who had quit the hobby and given all his stuff to the guy I bought it from. I don't play chaos or have chaos army (anymore - I had a second hand Chaos Space Marine army but I didn't have time for them and they didn't really tickle my fancy so I sold most of them to a friend). I have a couple of units, but that's it. Anyway, this was too cool to pass up in my opinion.

See? Wood.

Now, I fall firmly on the "if it's there you're supposed to paint it" camp when it comes to stuff like bottoms of tanks, so the bare plywood does elicit bit of a cringe from me, but in this instance I'm not going to do anything but the already completed varnish for the model. I don't want to tamper with such a cool old scratch build.

Canned Failure

Everything doesn't always have to be perfect (I hope). The subject today is failure (Ooh, dramatic!). I’m sure everyone has at some point encountered failures in their hobbies or other things that bring them joy. I certainly have. With miniatures, the options are usually limited to starting over, accepting a result you’re not all too happy with (and taking it as a learning experience) or just leaving the project (I’m fairly certain there isn’t many a wargamer or miniature painter around without some projects “in progress” for n years at any given time). The mini I’m using as an example falls into the latter two categories.

When I started 40k again a couple of years ago the game was nearing the end of it’s 7^th edition (I missed about half of the 5^th edition and the whole 6^th, in addition to the start of the 7^th). I started again with Space Marines and chose Iron Hands chapter tactics (a moment of silence for the loss all Iron Hands players suffered when the edition changed) because they were cool, and allowed for a heavily mechanized force. With this in mind, I decided to convert a biker Techmarine for the army. It took a lot of effort and multitude of bits (besides the plastic space marine bike and biker used as main part of the mini, it includes 2^nd edition techmarine backpack and parts from the 3^rd or 4^th edition Iron Warriors upgrade kit, Rogue Trader Rhino, 4^th edition space marine captain and Forgeworld Titan Techpriest). The end result, in my opinion, looked great. I consider it the best conversion I’ve done so far (that’s pretty much the reason I decided to write this actually, since the paintjob is anything but). Alas, the ruinous powers were a foot when it came time to paint it. I don’t know what went wrong, but the primer came out all goopy and splattered, looking horrible and obscuring detail (this being one of only two such incidents I’ve had up to date – rotten luck that had to happen to this particular mini). I tried to fix the issue, but couldn’t find a way to strip the mini without having to start over and likely get some replacement bits (besides plastic, there’s also resin, metal and green stuff in the mini), so in my frustration I abandoned the project. Flash forward to last week (two years or so). I decided I’d try once more. Unfortunately the problem persisted, so I decided to cut my losses and get it on the table. End result is less than ideal (it looks horrible), but atleast it’s useable in games now (as long as you don't look at it too closely, that is). Maybe I'll make another version some time in the future and marvel at the evolution between them.

Right side

Left side

Underhive punks

As is perhaps obvious from the title of this post, it deals with Necromunda (Let's get you in the mood! Here is a playlist I've been compiling for Necromunda. I admit the two songs by The Clash might seem a bit out of place but I figured atleast some punk was practically required). I was very excited when GW decided to rerelease the game last year, Necromunda was the one Specialist Game I was waiting for the most. I originally discovered the game by accident, finding the Underhive rulebook (last edition of the old Necromunda, which was somewhat divisive) in a local games store and falling in love with the setting. I was never able to play the old incarnation as I wasn't able to convince my friends to take the plunge with me - fairly understandable to be fair, given that by then the minis were all direct only, our terrain collections lacking and the Necromunda cardboard terrain sets out of production. So, I was pretty happy (read: ecstatic) when the announcement for the rerelease came.While I haven't been able to play as much as I'd like yet (this will hopefully change in the near future as there is a campaign running in my FLGS), I have my gang of underhive scum hailing from House Escher - Suzy and the Slayers.

Suzy and the Slayers

 I went for the classic minis (great sculpts!) and a classic yellow colour scheme - none of those muted or drab colours for me, no siree! My plan is to paint one of each of the old sculpts (and some complimentary sculps like the Tanith Female Sniper and Last Chancers Warrior Woman) first and then start converting other weapon choices. The gals will of course all be named (some of the names are completely random, others have different inspirations). I just finished the latest addition a few days ago:

Rebecca, Ganger

And here's the rest of the gang. I apologise for the black bars on the pics, I was having some trouble transfering the pics from my phone. I may go back and revise them at a later date, but for now I feel they are sufficient.

Leader Suzy and Champions Helga and Rosa

Gangers Kasumi, Anja and Irina

Gangers Sophie, Lizzie and Eri

Juves April, May and June (would you believe me if I told you they were triplets?) and Fio

Lastly, Lizzie's backside. Ten points to you if you guess where the name comes from.

I told you I was subtle, didn't I!

Now, if I could only find the mini I bought to use as a Rogue Doc for the gang. She seems to have vanished into thin air.

Apocalyptic Weekend

Everyone knows those times when it seems everything you want to or need to do or are invited to seem to happen at the same time. This weekend in general, but especially yesterday has been one of those times for me. While fun, it can be a bit exhausting. On friday we played D&D for the first time after a pause that had somehow gone on for quite a while. It was a one-shot in which our characters had been hired to protect a local Baron's daughter and then had to rescue her from kidnappers and their employer, an unstable elven sorcerer going by "Paljasjalka" ("Bare foot" in english). I saw this as an opportunity to paint and use one specific mini I had been itching to use but which doesn't really fit into anything else, so I based my character on the mini and painted it earlier during the week.

Yosuzume - an Aarakocra Monk

I don't play any historicals, so I haven't really painted anything this small before. I have some 10 or 15mm (IIRC) samurai that I bought by mistake/deceptive photographing somewhere around, but so far I haven't really had any use for them.

Yesterday was the really hectic day though. One of my friends works at a video game company and she had invited me to attend an event they were holding for friends and family. The NDA was pretty strict so I'm hedging my bets and won't name the company or write more about it besides mentioning that it was cool, and I'm glad I was able to go despite having to leave early. The reason I had to leave early, was that there was a 40K Apocalypse game being run at my FLGS which recently moved into larger premises. I got there during the first turn and my forces (Beholders, some Assassins and a Knight) arrived at the start of the second turn, reinforcing Dark Angels, Imperial Guard and Tyranids. The other side had Orks (WAAAGH!) and Necrons.

Brutal corner of armor, artillery and lascannons. My whirlwind joined these and some of the frontline units were destoryed (that Knight included), but mostly this corner stayed the same for the duration of the game.

3rd turn

3rd turn. Those Lynchguards popped up from a Monolith that got destroyed and proceeded to wipe out my Terminator and Apothecary and badly wound the Dreadnought.

It turns out the Ork players had had most of their heavy stuff exploded before I arrived, so the game wasn't all that close (we won), but it was fun and everyone seemed to be having great time. One of the highlights for me was a Stompa charging (and squishing) my already wounded Callidus Assassin in a spectacular overkill.

"Uh oh"

After the game I had a sauna evening with some friends with sauna (how suprising), grilling, drinking and games on the agenda. We played Secrect Hitler (a consistent favourite), Captain Sonar (new game I'd gotten - the idea is that there's two competing submarines and each player has a distinct role - either Captain, First mate, Engineer or Radist) and Mario Party. Fun was had by all, altough I have to admit atleast I am paying for that fun today.

Speeding across the Land

This time the post is about old Land Speeders. Specifically the middle child of the family. The second edition speeders have always been one of my favourite minis in general, and are definately the best version of the Speeders in my opinion (I'm not much of a fan of the Rogue Trader flying couch - please don't make me turn in my oldhammer card).

The evolution of the Land Speeder. From left to right we have Rogue Trader, 2nd edition and 3rd edition and onwards. Pic belongs to GW.

 Last week after the first proper post of this blog (not counting the introduction, that was more of an "about this blog" type of a thing) I was contacted by an army buddy of mine - technically we were in the coastal forces (part of the navy) but  "coastal forces buddy" just sounds dumb, so I'm going with "army buddy". Anyhow, he had seen the blog and told me he had an old Ravenwing Land Speeder he had no use for that he'd gotten as a part of a lot and asked whether I'd have any use for it. I did and do, so he gave it to me. What a chap! We met up and chatted about the hobby for nearly hour and a half until I had to leave (had an early shift the next day), after concluding that we should have a game at some point in the future.

I did not expect to be able to finish the speeder this quickly. However, I've been home, sick, yesterday and today (we have a very bad flu wrecking havoc at work, now that I'm home as well everybody from our location and several people from the other two locations has been on sick leave within the last two weeks and we've had to close early several times due to lack of personnel), which gave me time to finish it between spouts of sleeping and reading (pretty much the only three activities I've had the energy for).

Gunner's side

Pilot's side

I think it's fairly obvious I still need a lot of practice with free hands and the pinwash, but overall I'm pretty happy with it. The change in scheme and on the shade of green has really done wonders for my motivation. I haven't had this much fun painting marines in a long while. With these versions the biggest hurdle isn't the actual painting though. It's the basing. The weight is ridicilous. When I was doing my other speeder a couple of years ago I spent more time, money and effort on the flying base than the mini itself, nothing held it in place until I got some ridicilously strong epoxy from the hardware store and strong magnets, and even then it still took several layers of epoxy and several days of hardening (this time it was sturdy enough for pictures after maybe 16ish hours, but I separated the mini and the base and left it to dry more after taking the pics, just in case). Seriously, you could rob a store with these things. Just throw it at the window or clobber the clerk with it.

The Land Speeder is attached to the flying base with magnets and a ton of epoxy.

Aaand I just noticed some green on the Heavy Bolter skull from the pic. That needs to be fixed.

 

Revitalising the Beholders

Beholders (on a blog titled Beholder's Lair - get it? I'm subtle like that) are my custom Space Marine chapter and main 40k army. I started the hobby again about 2,5 years ago after a hiatus of around 8 years and when I did, I opted to make my own chapter instead of continuing with Ultramarines as I had during my first stint in the hobby (I also had another custom chapter back then, the Shield Bearers. With badly written background and everything, and grand total of two painted miniatures).

Beholders in all of their badly lit glory - Lamenters and Assassins unrelated

When starting on the Beholders I pondered several colour scheme options, including a dominantly purple scheme, mainly green scheme with white as a secondary colour, two white schemes (one with blue and other with green as a secondary colour), and likely some others I've forgotten. I ended up picking the white and green colour scheme with green shoulder pads and aquilas (when present), white body, helmet and shoulder trim. That choice, as I later found out, didn't turn out to be all that optimal. I kept getting asked about my "Death Guard" army, which was fairly confusing considering they clearly weren't Death Guard. Except they kinda were. It turns out during my 8 year hiatus Games-Workshop/Forge World had changed the official colour scheme of pre-heresy Death Guard from white body, helmet and shoulder pads with green shoulder trim scheme which I was familiar with to a new scheme of white body and helmet, green shoulder pads and white or gold shoulder trim (seems to vary depending on the source). Oh joy.

Pre-Heresy Death Guard - Old colour scheme

By the time I found out, it was way too late to repaint the army. Thus I ended up with a loyalist space marine army intendend to be Sons of Horus descendants who missed the heresy (more on that in some later post - I have a rough idea on the background of the chapter but it's not finished by any measurement), that looked like one of the traitor legions. They were painted during my first year back, and while I'm no master painter, they're definately behind my current painting skills. This together with the colour issue put them on a shelf as far as painting goes.

Pre-Heresy Death Guard - Current colour scheme

 In the Beholder's current colour scheme (or old colour scheme now, I suppose, since I've decided to change it) the green is Vallejo Sick Green, but I've grown sick of it, so to speak (pun intended) and so went looking for opinions in the Oldhammer and general miniatures groups on Facebook (there are several oldhammer groups with differing focuses in Facebook - there is also the Oldhammer Forums themselves, but I've never hung out there much myself). Got good opinions and insight in several of them, but especially on MIDDLEHAMMER. Tested some of the ideas and ended up changing the green, and also painting the greaves green from now on (I'll be painting the greaves on the existing minis with sick green to mach their shoulder pads, but after that it's time for more healthy colour choices).

Old colours on the left, new colours on the right.

I like the new scheme quite a lot, and luckily it's close enough to the old scheme that the changes won't take forever and the greens don't clash too much. I've also decided to use black pinwash instead of dipping from now on - kinda need practice on that front though.

The two latest additions to the army, and the first ones in the new scheme. Devastator painted yesterday, and the Dreadnough today.

And a backside shot for good measure. Everyone loves a good backside.

Well, now all I need is readers and this blog is off to a good start!