Zomtober: Week 1

       So here it is, deadline day for the first week of Zomtober, and I have to be honest, its not an explosive start. These are the first 4 zombies I will submit to the challenge, if I can do 4 (or more) zombies every week this month I should be able to take the asterix off of my zombie horde label, which is my real aim.

Zomtober zombie count:4

        Humans in wargames always seem to be white, so I have planned to get some other colours mixed into my horde to try for a bit more diversity, and I have to say, I am really pleased with how his skin colour came out. I was really worried it would just be a muddy brown rather than an actual brown skin colour.Now can I work out how to get a variation in darker skin colours?

      The models themselves are from a couple of different manufacturers; the male zombies are sold by hassle free miniatures but I think they are actually from the zombie studio range, while the female is from the zombie vixens box sold by wargames factory I believe.

     Right, I had better get some serious painting done to make the next few weeks a bit more impressive, and I do have some good plans to put into motion.

Thanks for reading this, now I am off to paint some more zombies and read the other entries . . .

Lannister war-band for Saga

      A couple of months ago, a few of us at the club got chatting about the Game of Thrones tv series. One of the guys had just got into it and was buying up box sets as quickly as he could, but he also had that hobby itch to model something from the series. So that got us thinking . . .

      In the end the challenge became; both Alan and me had to build and paint a 4 point Game of Thrones themed Saga list ready for a game the last weekend of September. Easy. He picked the northern Starks and I picked the southern Lannisters.

      I decided to use one of the normal lists rather than one of home brew ones on the Saga forum, but that doesn't mean it won't change in the future, and went for the Normans as they seemed to suite the way the Lannisters go to war. Looking at the Norman battle board, I quickly realised their strength lies in their crossbows and their knights, but, as I wanted this list to be nothing like anything else I would ever play in Saga, I opted for a full mounted war-band. 

     The biggest problem I then had was trying to work out how I was going to model and paint them. The armour the Lannister troops wear in the series just wasn't how they looked in my head from reading the current books, which gave me massive hobby block for the first month of the challenge. I bought up a box of the Perry mounted men at arms as I thought the mix of different armour would suite the Lannisters, and I bulked out my numbers with a pack of War of the Roses mounted troops and a pack that included Edward IV to be my Lannister noble.

      After reading the September copy of Wargames, soldiers and strategy magazine, I had a brain wave. There was an article in it where the author had done exactly the same thing we were intending, but had stumbled across an interview by the Game of Thrones book's author, George R R Martin, where he compared the conflict with the War of the Roses. The Yorkists and the Starks are comparable, while the Lancastrians and the Lannister are too. So that's the inspiration I took for my paint scheme. Metal armour rather than the black and gold from tv and red lance shafts just to try and get some more of the family colour into my warband.

Teclis Lannister

      The war-band does need a bit of a touch up as it was painted really quickly for the deadline day, but the overall feel of it is right and I am pretty pleased with how it went. It probably needs more lion motifs on any available surface to make it feel a bit more fantasy but as the books feel much more historical in their feel than full fantasy I think I prefer the slightly under stated nature of the paint jobs, although a Lannister noble should always wear gold and ride a white horse . . .

       Again to speed the project up I chose to have all my troops as hurscarls to keep numbers right down,, but I feel that of all the potential kings in Game Of Thrones, the Lannisters are the ones with the most resources to throw at having an elite army, so I don't feel like I have gone against the grain by doing this. They will have their peasant army somewhere, but it's somewhere else.

     The game itself was delayed due to Alan's work commitments, but I am aiming to get a post on his models and a report up of how the game itself went in the next few weeks, just soon as we can organise us both being in the same place at the same time. 

Thanks for reading. Now, onto painting zombies!

Zomtober is coming

     So, with October looming on the horizon, it's the time of year to start thinking about zombies again, wait, you what?
     Zomtober is an excuse for bloggers from all different backgrounds to come together and use peer pressure to get each other to clear a very particular section of their lead pile.

The rules.

The rules are simple. To take part just paint one Zombie or Survivor (or more!) each week, in any scale you like, posting it to your blog by the Sunday (we use Sunday's as the end of each Zomtober week). So that means one or more minis each week on or before the 5th, 12, 19th and 26th of October. Simples.

(Shamefully copy and pasting the rules from Simon's blog, follow the link to see the full list of blogs taking part).

     My aim this year? Get enough zombies painted up to get rid of the asterix from the Zombie horde label on the side of my page. Now how many zombies do I need for a horde? According to the Oxford dictionary, a horde is 'A large group of people', which is really helpful. . . .

VBCW board

      I had a spare half hour or so in between doing projects and I thought I would use it to get my VBCW scenery out, to have a look at it all together and see if there is anything I really need to add to the look.
      I'm not sure this collection of buildings is even big enough to call a village but the BUF are here recruiting in their van.

      The bulk of the buildings are from the conflix range, a range I definitely plan to invest in more of in the future.

        

       The little, ruined stone building is my newest toy, a cheap model bought on ebay that, while it turned up completely broken, will be a valuable addition to my collection. A two story, open topped building will always be useful in any game, although I am particularly looking forward to using it in a mordheim game one day.

     I think I need to get my hands on some hedges and walls to really make it look like a village, but as a starting point I am really pleased with the stuff I have so far.

Thanks for reading

Something dark, this way comes.

     Another slow weekend in terms of painting achievements, but I am about halfway through a couple of big projects that need to be finished before the end of September so there should be some serious posts coming along soon.

     My one bit of painting I can show off is my BUF van. Much as I still haven't bought any actual BUF figures yet, they are on my to do list, I did pick this little thing up really cheaply at a railway show and it was fairly obvious how it should be painted. It will probably get a quick weathering in time, but at the moment I am pretty pleased with it.

Thanks for reading

Adepta Sororitas

           My sisters of battle army has been one of those projects that in my head was a stunning good idea, I love their fluff, I love the way they work, I even liked the models, but put into practise they are a horrible army to collect. They are stupidly expensive to buy, fairly mono pose once you get past your first squad and a half, and it is neigh on impossible to get some of the weapon options, then painting them turned out to be a chore rather than a pleasure. On the other hand, now they are done I am looking forward to getting a game in with them.

         So before I show the finished project I thought I would complete the run down of newly finished squads, first of which are some more sisters of battle. This is my second troop choice and my commander, meaning I now have a legal army.

     So with my minimum army (plus tanks) painted, all that was left of my planned project was a small squad of Celestians, and here they are. Painted in the same colour scheme as my basic troops but given a little extra bit of gold ornamentation  just to make them appear different on the battle field. While the sister superior has been given an abbess backpack to make her appear a lot more important than a normal superior as well.

Thanks for reading.

Bumbling on through

     This weekend was a blow out in terms of hobby progress. The same few models that were on my desk Friday after work, are still there, Monday morning before work, but I did get a little bit of painting done mid-week and I also did a little bit of tidying up of old models about the same time.

      The first 4 figures, below, are my zombie wedding scene from hassle free miniatures. These were yet another impulse buy earlier in the year just before I actually got married. Something about painting up both of us as zombies in the right sort of gear, just made me laugh, so it had to be done really, and yes, I did wear a bright yellow waistcoat . . . While these were painted up much earlier this year, I didn't get time to base them and as it had been bugging me that I hadn't, it was a job that crept back up my to-do list.

      The best man figure isn't from the metal hassle free set, but is a plastic zombie from a set that will be going up in dribs and drabs for the rest of the year.

         I'm going to keep an asterix on the zombie horde label until it actually becomes one. The 5 zombies I have posted up so far do not, under any circumstances, make a horde.

Until next time, thanks for reading.