Odds, Sods n ......Stuffs. A Medley of Mayhem

Blackstone Fortress finally arrived the other week  and it’s a peach!! Beautifully produced with a quality narrative setting and certianly leaves itself wiiiiiiiiiiiiide open for further expansions (sic ‘quests’)

My darling wife has even agreed to give it a go!~! Hopefully this will go better than her the last time I attempted to gateway her into the hobby with what turned out to be the completely and utterly cack game that is Rum & Bones 2. God bless her she tried her very best to get into the game and gave it her very best shot but a lump of shite covered in glitter still stinks the house out.  Stupid CMON!!!

Anywhooooooooooooo – Blackstone Fortress is open, sorted and preperations are being made!! But the minis, ohhhhhhh the minis. They are lush! None of this bung some aged sculpts in a box and hope no one notices/cares (yes Execution Force and a few others I’m thinking of ye)  – all brand new sculpts, characters and even foes!

Now, they are quickfit/snapfit which I am not a fan of usually BUT…… once you trim the psots, get past the halo mouldlines and the slotta bases – you have 48(?) cracking minis to get stuck into. I totally get why they went with snapfit and slottas and it does make sense so no harm no foul there.

As per usual I have a horribly full WiPping Shelf (actually it’s now expanded to 2 shelves) and a load of stuff way ahead of BF but I really want to get stuff into the new shiny!!

So……I decided to try doing them TT – tabletop quality/style. Something I’m not very sure how to do or if I can as I have never done before. So I’ve limited myself to 2 hours per mini max. MAX!!!! MAXIMUM!! (never gonna happen I know but I shall try)

For the first trial of doing these beauties quick and easy I picked out the Man of Iron – UR-025. A robot – gotta be quick n easy and most importantly QUICK to do …… I think I got him done in under 2 hours in total but as I painted him totally while streaming the time may be a bit wonky as painting while streaming takes longer than painting alone.

Still – I’m really happy with my first TT painted mini. Lovely mini to paint, not painting in sub-assemblies was a bastard for me though. Just not used to it at all. But still I think he came out pretty well.

Next thing was how to base them. I abhor slotta bases and just cant be arsed with filling the wee gaps and trying to even out the slotta tab to base and all that nonsense. So have decided, with the exception of the spindle drones, to base them all on standard 25, 32 & a 40mm blanks. This way I can paint all the bases in bulk (or  in 2-3 batch lots) together and then pin/glue the minis to them after.

But how to paint the bases. TT remember – so now fancy smancy base work. Having a look at teh game tiles I wanted to be able to do something that while not identical to the patterns and background on the tiles, would at least blend in and look in place with the tiles during play.
So I broke out the airbrush, some paints and a piece of plasticard and had a play around and the above was the result.
It’s not perfect and does need some refinement and tweeking but I think its gonna work and can be done pretty damn quickly and in mass numbers.

One other thing that have been working on is a (not)Noise Marine.  A group of us who stream painting minis over on Twitch are doing a bit of a collaboration to make a ‘band’. Spellcrow very kindly have sponsored us with the minis and each painter gets one mini to build and paint and then the whole band will be brought together at Adepticon next March. Even though have loooooooads of time, I couldnt wait and jumped straight in.

Below is the progress so far. He’s not quite finished but getting there. I just need to polish up a few details and then build a base for him. I’m thinking of some sort of scratchbuild large Slaaneshi amp for him to stand atop of……….