Silent but not dead!

Well the blog has been a bit silent as of late, you know how life is.  You think that you have all this extra time to do things and it turns out that your expectations and reality do not match up!  Had a conference to go to prior to Thanksgiving which put me off track and I foolishly told myself that I'd have plenty of time over the Holiday break which evaporated with a trip to visit my oldest son.  No worries as our Aussie mates would say, I'll catch up during our Christmas break.  Yea that didn't happen until today while watching some college football.  So I think that it is blog obligatory to do a recap at the end of the year.  

2016
It looks like I managed 36 posts for the year, not bad that is a little more than one every 2 weeks.  Better than I would have thought.  I covered everything from resurrecting an old Fimir project to covering a start to finish project for Car Wars/Dark Future.  I played around with new figures like Reapers Bones and new techniques like a wet pallet.  I babbled on about some Oldhammer nostalgia and my never ending search of used bookstores for materials.  Respectable output for my first real foray into the blogosphere.  I don’t know that I’ll ever match the literary output of James over a Realm of Chaos 80’s or the painting quality of Matt at Oldhammer in Toronto.  I’m fairly happy with this effort but would like to do more.  

2017
Now we transition into the other obligatory end of year/New Year’s blog aspect, resolution/goals for 2017.  Well I could go through and put to use some new management training I’ve recently received and set up some S.M.A.R.T goals but I’m on vacation/holidays so no work like thinking!    Instead I will do some combination planning and set some blog and painting/hobby goals all in one, here we go:

1.       First off let’s shoot for weekly posts for 2017.  I think that I can achieve this without too much effort if I just put my mind to it.

2.       Next goal is to put some paint on the Fimir project figures.  That might take some effort since I haven’t settled on a paint scheme.  I think I also have to overcome some fear of getting paint of them as well.

3.       Kickstarter kicking butt!  I have a ton of mins coming in from several Kickstarter campaigns that I backed in 2016.  They should start rolling in January, starting with Diego’s Space Raiders 2, to his Pantheon of Chaos, Greenskin Wars and Space Raiders 3.  That doesn’t include Direhard Miniatures 2 and the plastic OGRE mins from SJ Games.  Will be a busy year for new lead, it will take some effort to not ignore the old lead lying about!

4.       Lastly and probably the easiest is a name change for the blog.

Not too many goals which leaves me room for improvisation during the year.  Seems like I’ve covered all the bases so I’m out of here for 2016.  Happy New Year to all!

Project Fimir-Trooper

Thanks to Matt from Oldenhammer in Toronto for prompting me post some more, busy week so I've fallen behind some.  Matt has recently posted some great Old School stuff (Battletech Mins) and just today a great Oldhammer post about the wonderful Lichemaster himself, Heinrich Kemler! 

Back when I sent Mr Saturday pics to post on his blog some time ago I totally forgot this guy!   A very simple conversion.  Dropped the arms and did a weapons swap out for twin axes.  Head work is an addition of 3 topknots, I had an image of him looking into the wind with the top knots flowing like some cheap romance novel cover!  

One final guy to follow this one, interesting he is actually an authentic Fimir Lord and not one of the recasts like his fellow and all his predecessors.  He is also a very crude color test so I'm interested in feedback since I finally intend to get paint on these guys!

Project Fimir-Background

On my quest to collect the Fimir models I stumbled upon this little gem.  

It is Warpstone's special Fimir dedicated issue 25.  For those of you who aren't into WHFRP 1st edition this is a fanzine for that system and has some great material in it.  Unfortunately it appears that they ceased production at issue 30.  As a side note:  Fantasy Flight Games has ended all of its licensed Games Workshop properties, I wonder what the future holds for WHFRP?   I've found various copies of Warstone here and there over time.  Undoubtedly I'm sure that there are some digitized copies on the web if you do some searching.  Anyways I found the sample excerpts of this online and had to get my hands on a hard copy.  Turns out that same year I discovered it I was at the Origins Game Fair in Columbus Ohio and one of the vendors had a new copy.  What a great score for me!  Has some interesting background in it that was originally intended for a WHFRP module that never saw the light of day under the previous license holders of the 1st edition rules.  If you’re a Fimir fan get a copy it is well worth it. 

There is also some background in White Dwarf #102.  All good sources.  I won't go into all the history and issues with the Fimir over the years, there are plenty of online sources that do a much better job than I can retelling their history.

Project Fimir-Musician

Similar to the standard bearer, this guy was again a pretty easy conversion job.  

 Lowered the left arm, re-positioned and then added the femur drum stick from a 3rd generation of Golgfag's Ogre Mercenaries. 

The same model supplied the drum on his side as well.  Similar head conversion as the standard bearer, just a different topknot from what I think is a Chaos Space Marine head.  The weapon is a chaos sword from a chaos knight.  I have not been able to source the origin on that one yet and to be honest not sure if I will keep it or swap it out for a different sword.   

Overall I like the conversions.  I only wish that I had the unarmored head so I could make some copies of it and do some additional conversion work for variety.  I'd also like some tail variety but I don’t see that in my future.  Not bad for a group of figures that I had initially written off as junk due to their re-cast status.

Project Fimir-Standard

Again based off the same Fimir warlord figure.  A little less conversion on this one.

Cut the right arm off, re-positioned it lower and did a weapons head swap with the mace that is typically in the left hand.  Removed the left weapon for the standard.  Head is a simple cutting of the original crest and replacing it with the topknot from an Ork plastic head.

The banner started off as, yep you guessed it one of my wife's earrings.  See a pattern here?  To be honest, they are a great base for a variety of things so you should always give them a look when your significant other drags you out on a shopping trip.  One piece of advice, it is always better to buy them specifically for this purpose and not after she has acquired them to wear!  The hand at the top is from a 2nd generation Bloodthirster and some cheap chain.  Another great source for chain is costume jewelry or in this case a gumball machine.  For a stretch there they were selling this very cheap jewelry in the prize ball and for 50 cents, you cannot beat them for modeling!   I wanted the shaft of the standard to look like it was made out of bones.  It is a two piece with the lower section being made out of brass tubing covered with bits from a variety of skeleton and zombie kits.  The upper part is a brass rod covered with the same bits.  It fits in and out of the brass tubing so that I can remove it to store separately.   The skulls hanging from the chain are from the 40k Khorne Berserker set.  Overall an easy conversion which should be fun to paint.

Bones everywhere!

I have to confess, I must have the adult version of ADD because I tend to be waist deep into a variety of projects instead of completing them one at a time.  I decided to try my hand at my first Reaper Miniatures Bones product with their Werewolf #77009 by Ben Siens.  First off wow what a great product in terms of price alone.  This miniature was a bank breaking $1.99 retail and I saved 10% off that as part of our hobby shops regular discount.  This harkens back to the old, old days of miniatures when you could go into a hobby shop and buy a loose Superior miniature for a buck or two!  I had to fight the urge to buy a half dozen of them at that price.  I have to be honest, their cost and level of detail are a couple of the reasons for me getting back into the hobby.  Not sure how this casting medium does with paint but I'm about to find out!

Here is a pre-opened shot of the miniature.  I'm a fan of the Weird West genre and have collected a variety of Old West miniatures over the years with the odd horror one here and there for those weird games.  That was the impetus behind this purchase

Here are some size comparisons left is a variety of Wargames Foundry Old West and Plains Wars miniatures.  On the right we have an old Citadel Night Horrors Lon Chaney-esque werewolf, a Horroclix werewolf, and the Reaper Bones.  I suspect that I will probably trim off the base to lower his profile on a slota-base.  That will come later.

Did a little online research and I went the wash it first rout with a little Dawn dish soap.  They are a bit pliable but nothing like the old soft plastic Airfix models.  I did notice it was a bit hydrophobic as i rinsed it off so we will see how the prime/base-coat goes.

I've primed it up in this picture, but not with any special product.  One of the attractions of  the Bones material was that it really supposedly doesn't require a dedicated primer.  So this is black paint straight put of the pot with just a hint of water to let it flow better since it is craft paint from Joann's.  It should be ready to go for finish paint.  I went with a black basecoat since I indent to highlight up the figure it seemed the most logical choice.  More to come!

Space Elves

I was a Warhammer/Oldhammer player and collector long before Rogue Trader 40,000 came out and to be honest I was never a fan of the fairy folk.  Not sure why, maybe I had too much of the greenskin aggression in me or tainted by a bit of the power of the warp.  Regardless I never found any elf models that really enticed me other than the old Melnibonéan range that evolved into the High Elf range.  Then 40K came out and the Space Elves were released putting the faey folk back on the radar. For those of you who aren't as grey or long in the tooth as me the initial Space Elves release of 12 miniatures would evolve into the Eldar and Dark Eldar ranges of today.

Design wise seem to be a sci-fi evolution of the Melnibonéan/High Elf/Silver Helm models with the command group being a direct take off of the "demon" faced Melnibonéan cavalry figures.  Take a look at Lancer 1 and Sword 2 and then Cmd Avele Swifteye below.

I enjoy the design, smoother lines without the bulk and hard edges of the Space Marines. As a wee lad I had a problem that I’m sure we all shared, very limited disposable income, which prevented me from indulging myself back when they were current releases.  I think I instead jumped into the RTB01.  But I digress, I managed to pick up an ebay lot of 8 on the cheap.  3 of which were weapons platform crewmen.  Initially I wasn't all that enthused by them but then inspiration struck.  "Why not use them as test figures for you color schemes?" I pondered to myself and this fellow was born.

Just playing around with some color selections.  I kind of like this one which is similar to one from Brian Ansell's collection as show over at Eldrich Epistles.  I'm still going to play around a bit and land on my first squad’s color scheme soon.  My intent being that each squad will have its own color scheme.  They are pirates/corsairs after all so I don't see the need to be uniform across the entire army!  Once I get these painted up I'll tackle a dreadnought or two from the earlier post.