Ōuchi Clan Ashigaru

   After a break of a few months with other projects distracting me* I decided I needed to get back to work on my Ōnin War Samurai project** and get on with the opponents the Ōuchi clan. Starting as normal with the regular foot troops, which for feudal Japan is the Ashigaru.

*as per usual

**slightly grander title than a colour scheme I found online

   I found a single picture online that claimed to have the colours worn by Ōuchi clan Ashigaru and with no knowledge of my own, I decided to take it as gospel and get painting.

  I've decided I need to focus on getting a few key projects finished asap, so hopefully you won't see too much of me bouncing around for a bit.

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More Sons Of Horus Terminators

   I'm on a bit of a roll with this project* and while I'm getting things moving I thought it was worth getting the last 5 infantry done and off my list. These are the other main flavour of terminator in 30k (lets all ignore indomitus terminator armour) Tartaros armour, slightly less armoured than Cataphractii but far more mobile.

*painted a couple of weeks ago

   I wasn't as big a fan of this mark of armour, for me 30k is the bulky Cataphractii but this mark has its place and it does look good in my version of the Sons of Horus sea green. I can really see these looking good in Ultramarine Blue with my MKIV Ultramarine army.

I'm just waiting for my replacement landraider bits to arrive and then I can look at getting this list done.

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The Red Angel Calls

   I went into this year not planning to do many/any(?) new projects but after a conversation with my brothers about their gaming plans for the year, both have expressed a desire for a cheap year in terms of playing a couple of different combat patrols but not building massive armies*. So while I am still going to try and get a couple of bigger games in at some point this year**, it has allowed me to muck about with other combat patrols slightly more guilt free.

*working on the theory buying a new combat patrol is a set price they can budget into their plans, while armies tend to be unpriceable and suffer from unplanned project creep

**if my gaming venue ever reopens

   The World Eaters were one of those combat patrols I had my eye on but probably wasn't going to push the button with until two things happened, 1. GW announced that the chaos daemon codex wasn't going to be a stand alone thing and that we'd get mixed daemon/mortal God books for them. 2. My brothers wanted to stay with Combat Patrols. This meant that I was going to end up buying the Khorne book anyway as my Khornate daemons are my biggest daemon army, so I might as well get the most use out of the book, plus its a combat patrol I can use against my brothers. Also, the patrol being three core units with sensible upgrades meant I had a solid basis for an army no matter what happened in the new codex.

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Tiny Romans

   I started a test 2mm project with 3 units back in 2021 but didn't get any further than the 2 bases of infantry and a bit of scenery, then at Salute one year * I went nuts and bought enough to do two sizable armies for the Late Republican Romans and Gauls. My painting at the moment is still just flailing around and I'm doing whatever is on my mind, with the 2mm project being something that went round in my head one early morning sitting in the dark with an awake baby.

*I want to say 2023?

   I'm not sure why I stopped doing this project at the time, other than I guess it went down the priority list. I know the cavalry and Gallic warbands were intimidating me a bit but the legions are fairly easy to keep moving. I decided to do a legion and try the cavalry to prove to myself they were do-able, then added another legion as I got the first done quicker than expected.

   I have to say, that I enjoyed the cavalry more than I expected and have a real urge t buy more of them, only having the one as it was about the minimum I could get away with. Before that, I just need to finish a project and get it on the table.

A Gallic warband or two next, I think.

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Scenery Project 1 - Dibbler's Meat Pie Shop

   I've been looking online for some interesting buildings to supplement my collection, those models that just have a bit of character to draw the eye. I follow Fogou Models on Bluesky and this building came up as someone had shared it, which instantly made me realise I needed one for my Madina.

   Its made of an almost plaster of Paris feeling resin, so is a very different beast from the other plastic kits I've been playing with* and with it only taking an afternoon to paint, it was a lovely little project. The model is called the Bakehouse and I've added a roll shutter door** and junction box from the same company just to give it something, along with cardboard signs. 

*this will not play well if stored in the same box as a foam built adobe

**I meant to order their shop opening but didn't realise I'd ordered incorrectly until I made this post

   All of my other scenery for this project has been made with multiple periods in mind, so I'm trying not to put anything futuristic on that can't be removed for WW2 or Medieval games. This model I just decided would be sci-fi all the time and I think it just suits it.

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Vehicles For The Desert

   A few months ago we took the family on a long weekend to Cornwall to take full use of the last year where holidays can be taken in term time, this was supplemented with an extra night in Devon to break up the journey home. Looking at where we ended up staying it became obvious that a quick stop at the Tank Museum in Bovington was a real possibility.

   We went to the museum fully aware that a young family and museums normally means a rapid exit when someone gets too bored, so I set my hopes low and aimed to see a few key vehicles. However, we were pleasantly surprised, every area has something for kids to play with, be it a table with army figures, fake Lego to build your own tank or a giant snakes and ladders, all topped off with a massive soft play.

   This all brings me back to the project I started as the big early project for 2023, my African theatre British for WW2. I worked my way through the infantry in January that year but I was stumped on the exact colour for the vehicles and while I was working out my plan, other projects took over and this one was forgotten beyond it being the first option to play with my brother before we both drop the plan as neither of our armies were finished.

   Coming back from holiday, I was, unsurprisingly, massively motivated to get some tanks painted, so I went to work playing with sprays and paints in my collection before deciding on a Zhandri Dust spray as a prime then a really watered down Tallarn Sand just to get the colour a bit closer and I was quite pleased with the result on the test Humber MK2 (below).

Humber MK2 from Warlord Games

   I then decided to use the other vehicle that came in the Gentlemen's War starter box to test the blue camouflage, which took me a few days of looking at my paints and photos online before I was happy to try an idea. Then work and home life hit hard and it took me about 2 weeks to finish this model, but again, I'm pretty pleased on the end result.

Stuart "Honey" tank

   With those done, I then sat on the project again for a bit due to just a lack of opportunities to actually use these armies, but with the new Wayland Games venue hopefully opening in the next couple of months, it would be good to get this project usable and ready to go.

   With that in mind, here are the first Matilda and a light mortar team that I need for my first list. I need to pick up another sprue of 8th army infantry as I am short an officer team in the new edition, but otherwise I just need a table and time to get a game in.

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Sons of Horus Terminators

   Hobby wise I'm bouncing all over the place at the moment and I'm not all that apologetic about it. Between work and kids, my hobby time is all over the place so I'm sticking with the 'anything painted is something off my list' theory of getting stuff done and hoping to just keep chipping at projects.

   In that vein, I have a smaller sub project in my Horus Heresy Sons of Horus that I wanted to get finished and that is a terminator/landraider themed army. In the book Vengeful Spirit there is a scene in the battle for Molech where the Sons of Horus rush an army forward where the first wave is described as being entirely terminator armed and in landraiders, and this has very much stuck with me, with various lists written in my head, priced out and then scrapped.

   However, I've been slowly doing units for other projects and ended up in a position where I basically had everything I needed to try it out, so that's what I am doing*. This is the big block of axe wielding terminators to accompany my preator in his shiny Spartan transport. 

*although, as of last night I have found out my last landraider that I bought in 2020 is missing a sprue, so that's an email to customer services

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HMS Bienfaisant

   A project that I need to get better at working on is my Battle of Dogger Bank (1781) navies. I'm always really pleased with the ships I finish for this project and the box they are stored in is something I can happily just sit and stare at*, but the process of rigging the ship is an ordeal if you aren't in the right frame of time.

*although my mate Neil's ones are a work of art that put mine to serious shame

   Every ship I've painted for this project, so far, has been for the Dutch navy, this is the first ship for the British, HMS Bienfaisant, a 64 gun ship of the line captured from the French.

   I had a plan to try and do a ship a month this year to just keep them slowly trickling out, its now march and this is the first, so that's going well.

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Little Gallopers

   Back early in 2022, I put a post up with some 15mm English Civil War dragoons for my Parliamentary forces and made a passing comment at the end of the post saying I was looking forward to getting this project on the table later in the year - that was 3 years ago at this point and I am pretty sure these Royalist gallopers have been on their sticks with the horses painted that whole time judging by the amount of chips to the paint.

   Over on the social media app Bluesky there is a guy who is encouraging me to look at buying into American War of Independence in 10mm as the models do look amazing (although, I suspect if I do get into that, it'll be in Essex's 15mm), however, as I was sitting at a kids birthday party being tempted by the toy soldiers online a sensible voice in my head reminded me of two things; 1. Money, lets hold off spending money I don't need to for at least a bit. 2. I have so many 15mm projects that can't get onto a table due to not having even minimal armies being complete.

   I've been painting a real assortment of odds and sods, but this is a project I think I should focus on as it is close enough to being complete that its worth the push but also, I think it will look much more convincing that my 28mm project for this era, mostly just as the pike blocks look much more 'pikey'.

   These are the two units of cavalry I like as a minimum for these projects, a captain/general and a horse holder for the back field. I'm pretty sure the figures are all from Essex Miniatures barring the horse holder stuff as they are from Peter Pig.

   This is definitely a project that I always meant to expand much further than the initial 24 points or so of Pikeman's laments forces but to even think about that I need to get the infantry finished now.

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5th New York

   While on sick leave I had planned to give myself two or 3 big (ish) projects to do, mostly painting big units of things that I just haven't been doing in my normal painting time. One of those was an army of Warlord Epic scale American Civil War Zouaves that I picked up in a sprue sale last year. I had time while off to get some of the base colours on and have since gone back over them to get them done.

   I really like having Zouaves on the table when playing ACW as the reds they tend to have in their uniforms give a bright pop above all the blues, greys and browns that the Union/Confederates normally wear. I have a few units painted for my 28mm ACW in the form of the 72rnd Pennsylvania, Baxter's Fire Zouaves but for these I went for a more "Zouave" colour scheme and picked a unit that had the red trousers, this time being the 5th New York.

   I'm hoping to get more 15mm gaming in this year* and having these done gives me one more thing to put on the table and something else not sitting on a side next to me. 

   I need to get their other banner, but they have their US flag for the moment.

*although I need to actually game to do this

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Risen Like Immortals

   I've just had two weeks off work after some really minor surgery and I had thought I'd get some jobs done around the house, but that my hobby time would sky rocket. This was not the case, however, ,the first day I did hide down my hobby shed and paint some something easy just to ease myself in, and two units for my Necrons were the chosen project.

 

The two units are a Hexmark Destroyer and a 10 robot unit of Immortals. Like the vast bulk of my Necron army all of these models came from past issues of various Warhammer magazines, I can't remember if it was Imperium or Conquest, so were so much cheaper than buying at retail that it is daft. I do have one or two things left on my shopping list for this project that I do need to spend real money on, but I've really enjoyed the fact I have a decent sized force for next to nothing.

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Sweet, Sweet Caffine

   Every now and again I paint something that I feel the need to justify to myself, and this one is simple, because why not. As soon as I saw this model, I knew I had to have one for my wagon and baggage collection as I am currently a man who doesn't really work until I've had my first coffee of the day*.

*if I can even drink it before it gets cold

   This is a coffee wagon plus limber for my American Civil War Union infantry. It could do with a horse team like my other wagons, but as its modelled set up, I didn't have picking up the extra models as a priority.

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The Heraclean

   Every space marine legion in 30k has/had a named elite terminator unit of some sort which were seen as far more elite than even their regular terminator squads. For example these included such names as; the Blood Angel's Crimson Paladins, the Deathguard's Grave Wardens, the Nightlords had two being the Contekar and Atramentar, while the Sons of Horus had the Justaerin.

   I like the idea that, while my chaos space marine warband definitely doesn't include any Justaerin, they might have decided that their top tier unit would have a name, aping the legions of old. Hence the Heraclean were born.

   These guys are just the terminators of the warband, no more, no less, but they sit at the top of the promotion ladder for the regular troops of the army and that's an important thing to have.

   This is the first 5, I do have another 5 that I need to tidy up from an old army but they will be a bit more work.

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Chaos Space Marine Combat Patrol

   Speaking to my brothers about what games they want to play this year, they have both said that they would like to stick with Combat Patrol as their main way of playing as it allows them to dabble with armies and ideas without investing too much, plus neither has much painting or gaming time, so it keeps everything manageable. So I have been looking at my projects to see what needs doing as a priority and a combat patrol I should have finished a long time ago is my Chaos Space Marine one. This was supposed to be my big army for the year, so why was this basic part of it not done?

   The first model was the character - a master of possession. This model sat unfinished on my desk for ages as I just couldn't decide how to paint it. I'd finished the red armour but found myself stuck. Once I painted the bone detail, black coat and decided on grey fur (round the back) the bulk of the decisions were made and it went together much easier than my head thought it was going to do. I'm quite pleased with the blue flames as they don't look natural.

   The next thing was the squad of regular marines. I've got a fair few finished marines for this army but I wasn't sure I had the exact weapon options and as I had a spare set on the sprue, it made sense just to purpose build the right squad. This was also the first unit to get the new army symbol on their shoulder, which I am really pleased with.

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Fjord Serpents - Karvi

   As a general rule I'm avoiding buying games on Kickstarter* as for the price a lot of them go for makes buying them blind and without knowing it is definitely being posted to you just seems too big a risk. However, when I saw the Fjord Serpents game on Kickstarter a few years back, I was in before I'd even thought about it. This became one of those Kickstarters that I was fairly sure wasn't going to deliver once the manufacturer they had lined up couldn't meant the quality they wanted for the price and they had to start looking elsewhere. I'm fairly sure the ships and figures were supposed to be plastic with resin hulls but I might be wrong, while what we got were resin hulls with 3d printed parts and crew.

*which means I've missed some amazing games that then haven't gone to retail

   For me the Dark Ages, or Early Medieval period as it should now be called, is just the most fascinating part of history and something I am always drawn back to, and a Viking longship game just had to be bought.

   Then when the backer kit came out and the rules were made a bit more open, it became fairly obvious that a "standard" game would be about 3 to 4 ships, I looked to add another pair so I can have two fleets of 3, before realising that those two ships cost more than just buying a second starter set - with the only loss by doing this of not having a the varied prows that come in the single ship sets.

   It's the crew that have completely blown my mind. As the warfare is basically land warfare but on water, with the crew doing the fighting in shieldwalls and not the ships (like in Napoleonic naval warfare for example), I knew I'd be painting some, but each box comes with 322 figures (on stands of 3-4), this might take some time. I've decided to give the crew more of a gist of a paint job rather than spending loads of time, I've based in brown, highlighted in brown then done quick layers in a limited palette with the idea being they look about right as long as you don't look too closely. This is going to be a long project.

   This test ship is a Karvi, the smallest war ship in the game, which has 32 crew. I've gone for the plain red sail you see in a lot of art online, but I plan to vary sails in the future.

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The August Lion Patrol

   In the effort to finish a project, any project, I spent a few days making sure the last of my August Lion combat patrol was finished. I only had the terminator squad and the terminator librarian picked up from the magazine to do. I painted these vaguely the same as the rest of the force, with the librarian being blue as much for that being their codex colour as well as copying the Lego wizard he is supposed to be based on.

   The terminators should have white helmets to show they are veterans, however, I though the white would break the 50/50 split too much, so I decided to go with a black helmet to show their status, partly as it didn't add another colour and partly because the knight that came in this faction of Lego castle had a black helmet.

   The Librarian was slightly converted to make him a big more interesting, the joy of doing a lot of Grey Knight terminators at the moment is I have a lot of terminator sized interesting pieces. He got a weapon swap as it's a big part of the silhouette and a top ornament change.

There is every risk I will add the Dark Angel combat patrol to this project in time, but I'm not going to do it right now.

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The Lion

   Considering how much Horus Heresy I played a few years back and how many figures I painted for that project, I have never painted up a Primarch, despite definitely needing one for a few of the games I have played. I've always kind of felt that the price tag for the resin ones required a better paint job than I could happily do, so I've never attempted it*.

   However, with plastic Primarchs coming out for 40k, it was always just going to end up being when rather than if.

*plus they always feel like they should be displayed somewhere rather than stored in boxes and that's something I also don't have

   The three chaos Primarchs so far didn't suit my chaos armies, so they were out**, then there were the loyalists. Guilliman being the regent of the Imperium, just didn't feel like someone who should be on the battlefield and character wise I just don't see him going anywhere without his chapter, which I don't have and don't plan to do. The Lion, though, is much more of a loner, and I can see him just joining any of his descendants to do a job***, so as I have a combat patrol of Dark Angel successors, I asked for one for Christmas as a project.

**the newly shown off 4th one also doesn't fit

***although I just can't seen the Dark Angels letting him out of their sight without a unit of bodyguards of their own which I do plan to buy and do at some point

All in all I'm pretty pleased with the model. I've spent a bit more time on him than I would a normal model and I think it shows. It's also given me a bit more confidence doing these more expensive character models and now there are a bunch of new Phoenix Lords on preorder . . .

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Grimbold, Marshall of the Mark

   A bit of a just painting stuff that is near my desk for this post. I can't remember if I bought these models as Made to Order or if it was regular purchase, but they are a blister pack I always meant to buy. Then they went into my backlog to mature.

   I'm in that mood at the start of the year where I have multiple projects that I keep deciding are the MOST IMPORTANT EVER, but then by the time where I actually think I can fit some painting in, either my mind has changed or I'm struggling to focus on doing anything, so if I can just paint something, that has to be a win.

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The Horror Of Burning Things

   One of the projects that is staying towards the top of my list for this year are my Tzeentch Daemons. As mentioned before, this wasn't really a project I meant to start, but now I have, I would like to get them to about 1250 points which is a pretty good sized game, then if the army wants to expand in the future it can.

   I need to sort my Pink Horrors out as they form the backbone of the force, but there are other units that need to get moving, one of which are the Flamers of Tzeentch. 

   As part of the gift box of daemons my brothers bought me came a box of Flamers, however, at the very least I either wanted a unit of 6 or the ability to run two minimum units, so I bulked them up with another box along with a HQ Exalted Flamer to lead them, as why not by that point. It just made sense to do this unit all in one go instead of doing bits at a time.

   This is a unit I wasn't really sure how to paint, I had half a plan of making them a mix of all 3 types of horror but in the end I went for a different blue base and then varied the tone across them with drybrushes and washes.

   Part of me wonders if I should have painted the flames as magical flames rather than just fire - ghost like green maybe? - but ultimately I used real fire colours elsewhere so I stuck with that across the army so far. Maybe if I do another unit I can vary then, but it might look even weirder by that point.

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Nemesis Dreadknight Alessio

   Another model that came in the combat patrol is the Nemesis Dreadknight - or Baby Carrier as it is sometimes known. This is quite a divisive model in the Warhammer's current range, just because as a concept it sounds so good - a massive exo-suit that Grey Knight Terminators put on when even a Terminator suit won't cut it - but in practise it looks like something a new parent buys.

   In the novel Angron, a handful of Grey Knights go to banish the newly reborn daemon primarch and put on these suits to be able to do it, and it's one hell of a cool scene but model wise it can be hard to defend at times.

   On the other hand, I am thinking that if this army does continue to grow I would like at least a pair of these to be able to go toe to toe with Greater Daemons. This one is worn by the last member of Squad Alessio.

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Scenery Project 1 - Back to the desert

   Back in 2016 my regular gaming mate was massively into modern warfare, so as we gave each others interests a chance and tried to play a mix of games, this meant I got into wargaming the war in Afghanistan.

   He was a massive army nut who always meant to join up, so it was obvious which side he was going to play, when left me to take the Afghans/Taliban and also the scenery (as scenery is the bit of the hobby that is probably my favourite aspect). We played Sangim Skirmish, which due to this period in my gaming life, is still one of my most played rulesets, despite it being a set that I think relies too much on multiple tables to be really enjoyable. One of my biggest regrets was when he moved clubs and we saw each other less and less, was selling all my stuff for that game to him*.

*wasn't worried about the figures but I was pleased with the board.

   The bulk of the scenery that I sold was from Tinned-Fruit and I was incredibly pleased with it, but the rest was home made in some form or another, mostly with a MDF structure at the core.

   With last year's aim that we would be playing games in the desert** I had it in the back of my mind that I would need to work on rebuilding that board, but other stuff kept getting in the way. Saying that, I do have a Crusades collection, WW2 desert war army and our next 40k campaign will be on a desert world, so there is a lot of usage that will come from sorting this out.

**that went well

   I already had some desert scenery from 2020 when the enforced lack of gaming meant my heresy group started planning a big come back campaign based on the desert world of Prospero. I plan to use this post to go over the bits already done, so that the next two months, I can post stuff as it is finished.

   The Dyeing Mill was from a German company called More-Terrain.de and was just so different I had to pick it up. I'm really tempted to give this a repaint to match my other buildings but I'm worried I'll ruin it in the process.

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