General WIP Update-Incoming 3

Incoming Round 3-Okay now I can see I'm just bragging!  Got a chance to stop by a few HPB stores awhile back and hit the jackpot with finding three of the Horus Heresy novels I still needed!

That was about a month ago and I've already read two of them.  Looking forward to the third one soon.  I also received a parcel the other day that turned out to be my Kickstarter from Diehard Games.

I had to go light given my recent uncheck spending on several expensive Kickstarter projects.  I went with a nice collection of bounty hunters, an intergalactic lawman and his faithful cyberdog, and a space snakeman.  Not sure what the heck I'm going to do with them but I am looking forward to painting them up!  I did go through them and start the clean up process.  Most were in great shape but a couple of them must have been at the end of the mold life and had some nasty mold lines.  I really don't mind taking care of this until that damn mold line runs right through some important detail.

I also picked up some new bases.  These are Star Wars Legion bases for Fantasy Flight Games war game.  They come in a standard grey and could honestly be used right out of the package.

The above picture actually shows them already painted with a base coat of matte black, I just stuck them back in the package for storage.  I then highlighted them up to a medium grey with some weathering and miscellaneous spots and stains.

I bought these for the likes of the previously mentioned Diehard miniatures and a handful of other sci fi figures.  I don't think that I'll put Diego's Knightmare Games Space Raiders on them, some of his figures are huge and wont even come close to fitting on these bases which are 27mm.  FFG only has a few larger sized bases and they have some odd notching to them which I really don't care for.  I'll probably just stick with my hex bases for those beasts.

General WIP Update-Incoming 2

Incoming Round 2-So I didn't want to brag too much with a long post on acquisitions so I broke it up.  Maybe that is worse?  Oh well on with it then.  I have unfortunately been bitten by the damn Kickstarter bug far too many times lately but it is hard to resist with all the great work by people like Tim with Diehard Miniatures or Diego with Knightmare Games or in this case Mantic Games with their Hellboy board game.

It was too good to pass up especially since I'm always looking for Hellboy miniatures for WWW2 scenarios or just to have Hellboy miniatures!

Oh so many miniatures! I'll have to break out a few of the henchmen and have my hand at painting them.  I'm not sure how they will take paint as they seem to be a hard polystyrene.  Not sure if they will need a primer or if I can just slap paint on directly. I just got the announcement from Mantic yesterday and the second wave of this Kickstarter is due in a few months with a shit ton more miniatures!  At my painting rate I should get them painted up by, oh say 2025 maybe 2026.

General WIP Update-Incoming

Haven't posted much in a while so a quick update with a few more to follow.  Some news to report on the Acquisition/Collecting front!  I recently picked one more of the fabled C23 Ogres by the incredible Jes Goodwin!  I really struggle when someone asks me who my favorite sculptor is.  On one hand it has to be Kevin "Goblinmaster" Adams who's work influenced me to get into Citadel and Warhammer.  On the other hand it has to be Jes Goodwin, producer of some of my favorite Realm of Chaos miniatures as well as these C23 Ogres which are the standard that all others are compared to!

I picked up the executioner model #14.  This fellow gets me to 11 of the 16 from the above catalogue page.

Despite my rather snail pace I did get some basic paint on him and number 12 who I picked up a month or two ago.

I also received my latest Game Envy Hobby Holder Kickstarter order.  An extra large stability bar and the ergo grip holder.  I really liked the first version and was excited for the extra large version to  use on the guys above.

As you can see from the pic below it gives you more clearance for the larger models.

I also like the Ergo Grip (large red on the bottom) which has come in handy.  Not sure if I like the rig better with our without it but it is different, and very easy to switch out mins.

More updates to come.

Hello, my name is...........

Hello my name is Warlord Kcam, and I'm an addict.  Lead addict that is.  I simply cannot help myself, I have to buy more lead miniatures, I need to buy more miniatures.  Yes, sure I'll get them painted someday.  Soon, I promise!

Does that sound like you if your reading this?  I was motivated to share my addiction after doing some work this weekend.  As I mentioned in the previous post, I decided to put together my Knightmare Games Feral Goblins unit to paint up for Orctober.  I totally missed that target date but that is now water under the bridge.  I received the new additional troops along with some Bugbears.  I really don't have a plan for the larger fellows, I just thought that they were cool.  To get the unit ready I dug out the box with all the Knightmare figures to get the original Greenskin Wars Kickstarter goblins out as well.  I was surprised how heavy it was.  Then I became embarrassed at how many unpainted miniatures I had to dig through to find the other Feral Goblins.  Wow, at the rate I'm painting it will take me at least a year just to get all of Diego's stuff done.

That doesn't doesn't include all the lead that is sitting in these tubs!

 Or these drawers!

Or the boxes in the storage area!

Good lord, I'm not sure that I'll ever have enough time to get them done.

Surely I'm not the only one who does this right?   Does anyone else have this collecting addiction?  As I started this confession I began to think about this and clearly I was destined for this from an early age.  My mom recently sold my childhood home and I helped her pack things up including much of the residue of my childhood.  By the way, I'm still pissed off I didn't find my original 1st edition Deities and Demigods as we started to clean out the house.
 

As I packed things up or unpacked things at my home I realized that my drive to collect started very early with things like rubber eraser animals, Lego's, comics, and various collecting cards.  Darn my nerdyness, I of course collected everything but athletic cards which is where the big money is at!  Well it was never a matter of collecting as an investment just for enjoyment.

Clearly I have what must be some genetic per-disposition to collecting, thankfully I have been able to keep it in check for the most part.  I occasionally catch the show American Pickers, for those unaware it is about a coupe of antique/re-sale guys that travel around the US "picking" other peoples junk and collections for hidden treasures or items that they can resell.  I always used to get a chuckle when they found something and made an offer on it and the person replies "No I just don't think I can let that go" mind you they say this while standing in a room, or house, or even a barn that is filled with 100's of other items just like the one they just cannot do without.  Please note that I said "used to chuckle", after digging though all the stuff that I have around the hobby room I realized that I might just be one of those "people" who is so obsessed with their stuff they simply cannot let it go!  Please share if you have any of the same issues!

A Little Old School Novel reading.

I recently completed the first two books of the Night Lords Trilogy by Aaron Dembski-Bowden: Soul Hunter and Blood Reaver.  I haven't been able to find the third, Void Stalker, as of yet.

I was desperate to find something to read and couldn't bring myself to start the Legend of Sigmar Omnibus so I perused the shelf and decided it had been awhile since I read the Gotrek and Felix novels so I grabbed the first book in the series, Trollslayer to give it a re-read.

I made a funny discovery while opening it up to get started.  The original receipt fell out of it and I was amazed to find out that I have had this for over 15 years!  I think it is certainly time for a re-read!  And in fact I think I will give the entire series a re-read.

I like King's writing style and enjoyed re-reading the first novel.  It is an interesting layout in that it is really seven short stories presented as a recount of Felix's adventures with Gotrek.  This keeps the interest level up and was a fun read.  Nothing like Felix's recounting of how they dispatched the agents of the chaos gods such as the abandon mutants in Geheimnisnacht, the warpstone amuleted troll in The Dark Beneath the World (damn those Skaven bastards), the tainted Fredericksburg noble in The Mark of Slaanesh, the beastmen and mighty female chaos warrior Justine in Blood and Darkness, or Felix's old classmate Albericht Kruger in the The Mutant Master.  As you can see their struggles against the spawn of chaos are a common thread throughout their many tales.

Well I'm off to start Skavenslayer and reacquaint myself with Grey Seer Thanquol!

WIP and miscellaneous ramblings

Not much content to this post, just a few WIP shots, a question, and some rambling.  I changed out the blog title from the Latin to English.  Not sure why just decided to do it.

First up are a few WIP shots of the green lads and the off/on troll.

I have blocked out a few color sections and have at least one skin tone highlight on these guys.

Here is an update on the Off with the Old and On with the New Troll.  Stripped down.

And primed up after a little file work.  Clearly my 12-14 year old self didn't do much clean up work back then.  There were a few mold lines to resolve.  He is beside the next of my Jes Goodwin C23 ogres to get paint.  I think I'm within 2-4 of the complete set!





















Here is the first round of color blocking.

Speaking of the troll, can anyone identify the logo stamp on is base?  maybe Asgard?  Which is weird given he is also claimed by Citadel.  Any help with this mystery would be appreciated.

Now for the rambling.  If you are a G+ user you know that the end is near which is a shame really.  I like the platform, it had a good amount of traffic but not overwhelming.  Let you include blogg posts like this automatically.  Was well organized.  Wasn't as big brotherish as Facebook not that I have a lot of data for them to harvest and sell!  MEWE looks to be similar but not identical.  One annoying feature, your group gets dropped from the directory if it doesn't get a new post every 7 days.  I created a Oldhammer group, thanks again to Zhu for the use of his Oldhammer logo.  I'm sure it's just me being grumpy since the change of platforms not by my choosing.  Lets how that it gets more traffic and people start to participate in the groups.  Back to painting!

Back to the green tide.

As I mentioned in my 2018 recap, I have decided to get back to my roots and paint up some greenskins for 2019.  Orcs and goblins have been my first fantasy love since watching Bakshi's animated Hobbit and Lord of the Rings movies.



Diego with Knightmare games has some great miniatures out there by the greatest orc and goblin sculptor ever, Kevin "The Goblinmaster" Adams.  I have done a few of his Kicksarter campaigns and really liked the feral goblins so they were my first choice to work on.

After giving them a look while basing, it appears that they fall into 4 categories; wolf skins, boar skins, goat skins, and reptile and bat pelts.  I don't want to get overwhelmed with trying to paint too many varying styles so I made sure I had enough caps to get all the wolf skins ready for paint.  I have focused on them to keep the group manageable for the month that I am going to give myself to get them done.  I am gong to try a little different approach and go with a very strict base coat them wash then highlight process.  While this is my typical method I tend to focus on a single color/area with this technique and then move onto the next.  I often end of repairing/repainting areas that were already done but got contaminated by a wash or highlight from a nearby color or area.  This round of miniatures I aim to try the more traditional method and do them all at the same time. 

I'm also gong to start a new themed project appropriate named "Off with the Old, On with the New!"  The plan is to take some of my ancient mins and strip off my poorly skilled pre-teen paint jobs and redo them with what I hope are better paint jobs.  First up, in keeping with the greenskin theme, I picked out a troll from the old Fantasy Tribe Troll series (FTT04).

This was a very attractive model to a prepubescent boy in the late 70's with the nude captive slung over the troll's shoulder.  Not sure how I ever managed to slide that purchase past my mom, glad she really didn't pay too close attention to what I was buying!  I doubt that GWS would get away with that in today's market.  As you can see from the before picture, limited pallet, poor details and just average skin tone on the captive.  Not bad for younger me, lets see if old F@#% me can do better!  On to the painting.

The Great Painting Bust of 2018! A year in Review.

It appears that 2018 will go down as one of my weakest blogging and painting efforts in awhile.  I had these great ambitions for 2018: getting 52 blog posts in, working my way through the pile of lead sitting in my hobby space, actually gaming some, participating in Orctoer (which them became Gobvember) and Deadcember.  The list goes on, it turns out that my efforts were a bust.  I could come up with a dozen or so excuses like "the dog at all my paint" or "the bosses at work are so mean I just didn't have any time to paint" but lets be real, I was just lazy.  Or more positively spun, I just wasn't as motivated as I should or could have been.

Here is the misses.  I managed a whopping 12 posts for all of 2018, none since August.  Didn't come close to Orctober and totally missed Deadcember.  Honestly a post a week probably isn't realistic,  so I set myself up for failure.

While I lament away about what I didn't do lets change the focus to what I did accomplish.  First up was fighting off my adult ADD and focusing on collecting a full set of figures.  In this case my Champions of Khorne project.  Just getting the set purchased without blowing my entire hobby budget was an accomplishment.  The first group, the hateful 8 are close enough for me to consider them done.

A few minor details to clean up and finish.  White stuff on bases is sparkling compound to hide the slota base tab.  As with most of my projects I'll complete the bases once the rest of the crew is painted.  Here is the next group.

While I missed being able to complete a unit for Orctober I did manage to get a unit of Diego's Knightmare Games feral goblins based up, mounted on caps for the Hobby Holder painting rig and a few base coats on.  Speaking of the Hobby Holder, Kit currently has a second Kickstarter campaign going with a little less than a week left.  I would highly recommend it!

I also kicked off some Gaslands/Dark Future/Car Wars projects that I was able to wrap up.  To be honest these were lots of fun and actually pretty quick and easy to knock out.  I do need to get them a couple of coats of matte finish to protect their paint jobs.

And last but not least, 2018 did see one of my biggest hobby collecting journeys come to an end.  I finally completed my 40 year quest to collect the fist run of White Dwarf magazine.  That wonderful little magazine was one of the contributing factors that enticed me into the hobby and keep me engaged with it even though I wasn't always able to fully participate in it.  It certainly changed over the years but it was still a good read most of the time.

Goals for 2019: simple GET BUSY! I just need to make the commitment to getting more done.  I'll shoot for more regular posts, more like one every couple of weeks.  Painting wise I'll be trying to get more paint on lead with a quick goal of getting the green lads painted up by end of January. 

That is it for 2018, lets hope 2019 bears more hobby fruit!