Plague cart and ors

Well I finally managed to finish off the plague cart. I'm pretty happy with the result considering the figure isn't a great sculpt. I also managed to finish off a few other figures that fall into various projects I have going to keep me amused.

The (in)famous plague cart

Albino space slann

Dungeonbowl dwarf

Bretonnian Knight and a couple of wardancers

I finally managed to finish off part 2

Here' some pics of some of the figures I recently finished that I've had sitting on my painting desk for some time. The oriental ogre was by far the worst - it sat around half painted for over three years! A lovely figure but an insane level of detail on it. Anyway here they are:

R-rated Ral Partha/Citadel Demon

Chaos sorcerer and warrior - the colour scheme of the latter pinched from the white dwarf add for this figure

Oriental ogre and Talisman elf

Three snotlings for my BB ogre team

Next up - the finished plague cart (being based this weekend after I finally finished painting the darn thing)

I finally managed to finish off...

Many of you will know the problem - you get cracking on a figure but for some reason or another you get stuck at some point and simply cannot finish the damn thing. Well after looking at a number of half painted figures that have been sitting on my desk for months I got the inspiration to finish some of them off. Here are some pics of what I managed to complete over the last week or so that had been bugging me for some time - and there are a couple to come as I'm still finishing some additional figures, including a Jes Goodwin Oriental Ogre that I have had in a half painted state for over three years.

Ral Partha Djinn

Beastman and Chaos Sorcerer

Rogue Trooper and Major Magnum

I also completed two more Golden Heroes villains but these didn't sit around on my desk for months. I must admit these are fun figures to paint. Shame citadel never got the licence to produce Marvel figures back in the day. TSR did and I've got all the figures they produced - some are quite god but many are average. They are small too.

The Doctor and Rogue General

Curse of the Mummy's Tomb

Well one of my plans for 2015 was to play a game of GW's Curse of the Mummy's Tomb that was released back in 1988. I had played the solo version a couple of times but hadn't finished the full game before as the only time I tried we ran out of time before we had finished. Well I rectified that on Monday after watching the Superbowl (great game BTW - as a Packers fan I didn't really care who won and just wanted a good game and I got that alright). It is a fun game to play and the design of it using a 3D Pyramid is really cool. It is a game where one can play cards on other players to stuff them up which some might not like; it is a bit random too but most boardgames have an element of randomness to them. Only real criticism I would have is it is too hard to discover useful items in the game due to how the rules work regarding encounters. Anyway here are some pics of the game:

Mike and Wayne playing the game (Wayne won) 

Some of the cards - nice artwork by Gary Chalk 

Professor Nayland 

Marlow Hammet

Reverend Luther Kirkegard

Lt-Gen The Earl of Carmarthen

The mummy

A very old WFB 3rd edition article you may find interesting

I recently came across an interesting article on the Warhammer World Championship held in 1989 in a very old edition of GM magazine that I had back in the day (long story why I came across this which I don't need to replicate here!). What really caught my eye was the "gamey-ness" of the winning army. The winner (and this is no criticism of the winner BTW - one works within the rules as presented) played with a 7 cannon army! Now if one has played 3rd edition you will know how deadly cannon are. Personally I find the 3rd edition rules for cannon to be poorly written as there is no need to check for range which makes no sense - that did come later in White Dwarf 147 or thereabouts - it is in the rules for the new empire army that preceded 4th edition. I plan to try these amended rules out in the next month when my undead army will be ready to fight my Bretonnian forces.

One other thing to note is this - from what I can recall 3rd edition WFB competitions forbade the use of flying troops. These are the very thing that can negate war-machines such as cannon. I also seem to recall a limitation on wizards to second level magic - again a limitation that favours war-machine heavy armies. To me this is the antithesis of the oldhammer movement. Would love to hear your thoughts on this and I hope you enjoy the article (apologies for the size of the file - I want to make sure it is readable!).

First work of 2015

I've knocked a few figures off since the 1st of January but have been a bit slow in taking some pics of them. Anyway here they are:

Chaos sorcerer, thug and dwarf

Another undead rider and witch (a necromancer for my undead)

2 wraith and a ghost

Talisman thief and priest/minister

I've been experimenting with different ways of highlighting black as the usual grey highlights are a tad dull at times although I was happy enough with the witches highlights which were done in grey. So I've used blue highlights on black on four of the figures above and green on one (Sauron from the first citadel LOTR series). I'm inching closer to a finished plague cart as I only have one wheel and the wood to paint - hopefully I'll have a pic of a finished plague cart next entry...

2014 review and plans for 2015

Well it is that time of the year - to look back and what one has achieved (or not) and make some plans for the coming year. I went through my collection yesterday and from what I can work out this is what I painted in 2014:

About the only questionable things here are some of the space orks - I was painting some of these this time last year and cannot recall when I actually finished the first batch. Apart from that I know the rest of the figures pictured were done in 2014 and considering how slow a painter I can be I'm pretty chuffed at the result. Some of the figures pictured are slow burn projects I have going that I'll post about in the coming weeks and months.

So what else did I achieve that I really wanted to do? Well I played my test game of WFB 3rd edition whilst on paternity leave which I had wanted to do for ages. I also GM'ed a game of Rogue Trader (the Battle at the farm) which my wife and a friend played. The wife played it well too although in the end as the ork player she got done by a scenario which is badly balanced (if you go for the loot that is - call in reinforcements and I've been told the game changes dramatically).

Anyway so what do I have planned for 2015? In no particular order it is:

• Complete my WFB chaos army by adding a unit of thugs, thug bowmen, beastmen and chaos dwarfs noting that I've made decent progress on some of these units already. If I add to that lot it will be a bonus;
• Complete my WFB undead army which involves painting up all of the metal undead riders that I've collected plus zombies, ghouls, carrion and the plague cart. I've made some progress on some of these already so I should be able to finish the lot off by the end of 2015;
• Finish the base figures for advanced space crusade (2/3rds are done and the rest are in an advanced stage)
• Finish two of my dungeonbowl teams and play a game of dungeonbowl with my mate Mike;
• Play a game of Dark Future in the lead up to the release of Mad Max Fury Road; 
• Play another game of WFB 3rd edition - this time using my undead;
• Play Dragon Masters, Curse of the Mummy's Tomb and Warlock of Firetop Mountain at least once.

Other than that I'll continue to work on my slow burn projects as they add a nice element of change to my painting table. Those projects are:

• Heroquest;
• Advanced Space Crusade;
• Talisman;
• Dark Future;
• Golden Heroes minis; and
• Figures for mighty empires/Dragon Masters

Will be interesting to see how I go with all that!