Odds and Sods IV - A New Hope

   With more job applications filled out and my man cave returned to it's hobby orientated previous existence complete with DVD playing laptop* and a proper daylight lamp which, all combined, has led to my painting motivation returning. One of the big things I wanted to do with my enforced time off, was to put some time into those 'dead' projects, the ones that when ever I talk to someone about I always say that I don't have the time for but aren't so far down my list that they are likely to just be sold on. These projects included, both, the big stuff - Sharp Practise armies - and the small, less useful, stuff - a storm trooper platoon for 40k.

*This is how I imagine the upper class live

   As I am sure I will mention in a future post, I was in Edinburgh for a weekend recently and one of the things we did while there was go into the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards museum ** and what a museum it turned out to be. So with two units of Highland Scots on their way from Front Rank Miniatures, it was high time I got some more infantry from the South Essex out of the way.
   I decided to paint just a single unit at a time, but upon realising that if I painted at least one more sgt I reckoned I would have enough troops to try a small test game of the rules, I instead added both the none private ranked models to the painting queue and got on with it. While most of my readership was out enjoying Salute, I was painting Napoleonic infantry, normally one of the things I hate doing, yet this time I found myself strangely enjoying the process and I genuinely don't know why.
   With 3 units of British infantry, a rifle unit and a multitude of higher ranks I reckon I have enough Brits painted to at least try the rules out, which is what I plan to do in the coming weeks, along with painting more troops.

**Which has a French eagle on display

 

   Next up, I step away from strictly useful painted models into pure fancy and because I wanted to territory. After going to Warhammer World for the first time in a good few years in 2016, I left with a strange sense that I had been too harsh to Fantasy Warhammer's replacement, Age of Sigmar, so in 2017 when I decided I wanted to spend the year trying as many rulesets as I could, to figure out what systems I actually liked playing the most, rather than just playing what I had always just played, it became obvious that a demo of AOS had to be in order and it turned out to be a brilliant ruleset. While getting an opponent wouldn't be hard - living walking distance from a GW store and driving distance from Wayland Games - it was also clear that to play the game regularly I would need to drop something else, so it went on the back burner as a 'play another day' project, however, this didn't mean it was 'dead', I still wanted to be in a position where when I decided to start playing I could pick up my army and just go. So, with a small list written I started buying models (generally second hand from eBay) and trying to get the list together.
   The Gryph Hounds aren't the last bits to paint but they were the ones I wasn't sure how I wanted to paint. I knew I wanted to match their colours to the army's infantry but it couldn't be a direct match as these are supposed to be natural***, living creatures, so the body is a much toned down blue, the feathers are a lighter blue than the Stormcast colours, while the ornamentation matches their armoured counterparts exactly.

***Natural magical

   Another model that has been on my desk for a long, long time is the Techpriest/Magos Dominus for either 40k or 30k. It started out as a bog standard 40k techpriest, it underwent minor conversion just to make it look different to the one I already had painted up, then after it was primed and waiting for my inspiration to get painted, I had a better plan.
   In the end the figure has had; his two handed axe reduced to a one handed weapon, been given a walking stick (the flesh is weak), upgraded his single servo arm to be a pair on his back and one on his arm and been given a rotating cannon on his shoulder.

   Another thing that comes up a lot in conversation between my normal gaming mate and me, is how much we would love to play some Inquisitor style games, while we disagree on how the inquisition should work in 40k - he favours army sized warbands of the best tech available and I like small rag tag warbands of different specialists - we both suffer from the lack of inspiration to actually work out directions from our warbands, but every now and again something kicks the inspiration back into one of us for a single model, in this case the second Carcharadon novel by Robbie MacNiven.

   With the inspiration flowing I set off with a plan. An old Arbite I had picked up as part of a vague plan to slowly buy a cheap arbites gang for Necromunda that never really took off (I only had the one arbite) became the muscle of one of my inquisitorial warbands, complete with icon on his shoulder****.

****From a sisters of battle decal

sheet that is as old as I am

   Last up is the first of 3 squads from one of the before mentioned 'dead' projects. This squad of 40k storm troopers are part of a minimum platoon for my Hervictus Imperial Guard army and are another example of the sort of model that is propping up my lead mountain. These figures (even painted in 5's) are fast becoming my new most hated thing to paint**** but with 10 of the 25 man project done, I just need to keep the focus going.

*****Possibly why I didn't mind the Napoleonic

figures from earlier 

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