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!

Is that an Earthquake? Nope just an OGRE Pt.2!

It has been a very fortuitous month for my hobby life!  I received the limited edition Chaos War Alter off the Oldhammer Facebook group.  The Diehard Miniatures Kickstarter arrived as well as a dice one that I supported.  Then this morning there was a thunderous thud at the front door.  Well actually the postman did a heck of a job sneaking up and dropping off the box on the front porch.  My wife commented around noon that there was something out there and to my pleasant surprise I found this!

 Well it was an easy guess as to it contents.

The Ogre 2nd Kickstarter arrived and all I can say is WOW! What a beast of a box full of miniatures.

These miniatures were on the top of the box, 4 complete sets of the 2nd Kickstarter.

In addition there is a complete set of both Kickstarter miniatures underneath the pile of plastic.

I've always been a big fan of the game, I have a 2nd (or maybe 3rd?) edition, pocket box version of the game that saw me through a rough time in high school with a knee blowout and surgery.

I am pumped and can't wait to get these and the 1st Kickstarter set out and get them painted up.  Oh I can feel that twitch to drop the current chaos warriors project and jump into this one.  I must fight it!

The feature pieces of this set are the Mk IV and the PanEuro Fencer with both turret options.

I'm also looking forward to the 3rd Kickstarter which I believe is slated to have at least a Mk VI in it.

Concluding a 40 year Quest!

It has finally happened.  I fought my Adult ADD and actually completed a project, or maybe better put an obsession.  I have finally completed my White Dwarf collection.  Let me put some qualifiers on that.  First I'm referring to what I call the complete first run of the White Dwarf.  This is the one that started in back in 1977 and ran as a monthly publication to January of 2014 in the States when it then changed to a short lived weekly publication until returning to the monthly format.

Qualifier number two, while I have pictured WD #1 here I don't actually own issues 1-10, just copies.  Due to my frugal nature, or plan old cheapness, I refuse to pay the ridiculous amounts for these early issues.  I guess I'm not that obsessed after all!  If someday I happen upon those first ten issues at a reasonable price I'll certainly pick them up but until then I can live with my printed internet copies.

Why this nearly 40 year quest?  This wonderful little magazine was my gateway into Games Workshop, Citadel Miniatures, and the hobby in general.  The early issues of the magazine were actually dedicated to RPG industry and featured articles on everything from Dungeons and Dragons to Tunnels and Trolls to RuneQuest to Games Workshop titles like Golden Heros, Judge Dredd, and eventually Warhammer Fantasy Battle and Warhammer Fantasy Role Play.

What current gamers might not realize is how scarce actual brick and mortar stores were back in the day.  The RPG/Wargaming industry was just evolving and not as readily accessible as it is today.  You had to buy them wherever you could find them or via mail order.  And I don't mean via mail as in find it from a Internet vendor I mean look through the mail order ads in the back of a magazine.  I got my first RPG, the boxed D&D Beginners Set, at a very unlikely place.  The Spencer Gifts in the mall!

I also had some occasional luck at the B Daltons or Walden bookstores but they never carried much stock.

I was fortunate enough to have a few options here in Ohio, the first of which was my favorite haunt as a kid, the Tin Soldier down in the Dayton area.  I used to beg m parents to take me down there and I would spend hours flipping through the miniature blisters on the walls or sit on the floor right next to the magazine rack reading the latest issue of White Dwarf or Citadel Compendium or Citadel Journal.  Once I hit 16 and acquired an old beater car I was able to expand my options and often ventured to Columbus to visit the Drowsy Dragon a great little shop on the east side.

I was off to college, close enough to still visit Columbus occasionally.  And then I landed my first job in Cleveland.  I had a job and disposable income.  I found myself in the middle of the Golden Age of Citadel Miniatures with money and a hobby shop less than 3 miles away in Brecksville!   Emerald Games if I remember correctly.  Besides buying way more lead than I could ever paint, I was finally able to get a subscription to the White Dwarf and that is when this little journey began around issue 117.

I carried the subscription from the late 80's well into the 2000's until the price versus return on investment just didn't work for me anymore.  Content steady went down hill from general RPG coverage to becoming a GWS in-house rag.  I didn't mind the in-house shift at first since it was still rich with content.  

Background articles, full army lists, scenarios, Eavy Metal spreads, and the occasional template for a card house or vehicle modification, I still enjoyed it.  But later the cost versus what I was actually getting out of it seemed to diminish to the point where I dropped it altogether.  I had young kids and just couldn't justify it anymore.

This was about the time I lost interest in the hobby, again with young kids my free time seemed to be at a high premium and painting just didn't seem to make the to do list.  One thing that did keep me connected was the opening of the Half Price Books chain in Columbus which had not only old games but also the occasional White Dwarf back issue.  And these went cheap, I mean really cheap as in 50 cents tops and often I could get a stack of 10-20 mags for a dollar.  I was ecstatic when I stumbled upon them.  

I started to fill in my collection and slowly over years of effort I arrived to the point where I only had 4 issues left to acquire.  While I have purchased a few off eBay when the price was right I generally stayed away from this source since I felt they were often over priced.  I did find a 4 pack that had 3 of the missing souls for my collection and grabbed it.  

At that point it hit me, the brass ring is right there!  I can see it, heck I can even smell it!  I departed from my conventional wisdom of buying on the cheap and grabbed the remaining issue off eBay.

It arrived today, still in the shrink warp.   And it finally sunk in as I held it in my hands.  It was over.  I relate the drive to collect the back issues over the years to the scene of Pinto in Animal House with the little devil on his shoulder tell him to do all those inappropriate things to his passed out date.  

My crazy little voice would coax, encourage, even demand that I go check a book store or try just one more location.  That voice was gone.  I didn't hear it anymore!  While I was happy to have the last piece and have that complete collection I also felt a bit sad.  It sounds crazy but that search actually gave purpose to my many trips to used book store.  Now don't worry I haven't totally lost it,  There are no plans to lock my self in my hobby cave and disconnect from the real world but I will miss that excitement of checking the magazine areas for a missing back issue.  Knowing myself pretty well I am sure that I will find a replacement quest for that little guy in red to take up and encourage me to complete!

Yeah, baby yeah! Mojo is back

Title says it all, my paint mojo has found its way back!  And all it took was a couple of new acquisitions.  First group came in a package the other day.

Hmm, wonder what this could be?  Something from across the pond?

It is always fun when you get a package in the mail, it actually happens more often now a days than when I was a kid with the advent of Amazon and online shopping.  But I still get a charge even though I knew this one was coming.  Tim from Diehard sent out the heads up email a week or so ago.  I have to say that Tim and Diehard do a great job with their Kickstarter campaigns.

I went light with this one, I was feeling guilty at the time about all my unpainted lead so I kept the order small.  I added some SF robots and undead.  I definitely feel a SF wave of painting coming on with this group and some remaining space frogs I picked up from an earlier Diehard Kickstarter. 

The more important pick up was this little foursome.

I was in a funk and decided to grab some new paints from a local hobby shop.  I have to be honest I loved Citadel paints back in the day but lately I felt that they were a bit over priced.  That and I've had a heck of a time following the new developments in their paint system.

Well that came to an end when the local hobby shop owner suggested that I try the GWS paint app.  What a great suggestion!  It quickly educated me on what I needed to buy.  I haven't used the full base/layer/shade/dry/edge system that Citadel is currently marketing but I really liked my first experience.

With a couple of pots of new paint I had to break out a brush and put down some paint.  I painted up some brass on several of the figures and used the new dry brush paint to do hit some edges and high spots.  Picture isn't that great so more detailed one in a future post when they are further along.  Lets hope this train keeps on rolling.

In between bursts of painting I also did some work on the War Rig for Gaslands/Car Wars/Dark Future adding a few bits and pieces as well as a front plow.  I just need to pick up some diamond tread plate and corrugated plastic card next weekend to wrap it up.  It is getting closer to being ready for paint.