Evilstu's Fantasy Progress 2020

So was doing pretty well at grinding down my inventory of unpainted minis. And then the gorgeous resin dwarves I had ordered from MOM miniatures arrived. Great, looking forward to doing Dwarves. Everybody likes Dwarves.

This was followed by Raging Heroes running some Black Friday deals which meant I picked up a couple of dark/lust elves to bulk out the GW Dark Elves I had on hand, plus what I had from the Raging Heroes kickstarter, to a point where I could filed a small Cult of Slaanesh army from the Storm of Chaos book. Ok no problems.

And then Wargames Atlantic released plastic Halflings at a rate of 40 short guys to a box…

And then I scored a second-hand Dark Elves army on ebay really cheap, hopefully with enough spare bits to have a go at restoring some of the older second hand models I had accumulated over the years…

And then I went to Cancon and found people selling bags of classic metal minis for $20-$30 a bag. Or current era plastics for half retail price or less in the auction area…

Plus the very reasonably priced Kings of War 3rd ed starter box came bundled with two nicely sized starter forces, and the Nightstalkers look to be crying out for some washes or mixed contrast paints over a zenithal preshade…

As you can see, none of this is my fault, I’m just a victim of circumstance ;-P Also, I’m choosing to ignore the inbound Kickstarter stuff that I may have backed way back in time before I knew about any of the above stuff, and am similarly choosing to ignore how good the impending Mantic Naughty Dwarves look…

So have spent the last couple of days soaking and stripping back metal minis, washing resin and wondering what happened to my workbench and well organised storage space. Broadly speaking, these are the projects I have going on at the moment:

Halflings: Have a box assembled and primed (which gave me 3 whole units 🙂 ) plus a couple of characters. Have more infantry on hand and will look at sourcing some cavalry later on to round out the force (most likely TT Combat’s recent offerings).

Naughty Elves/Dark Elves: Stripped where relevant and awaiting restoration work and re-priming.

The Other Kind of Naughty Elves/Cult of Slaanesh: Not really organised here – the stuff I have procured specifically for this project is still on the sprue. The rest will be pulled in from my Chaos or Dark Elves armies so as long as I am reasonably consistent with the bases should all be good.

Dwarves: Resin has been washed down, no assembly to date. I will need to sort what other dwarves I have on hand. Want to go with a stone textured base effect so plan will be to GSW roller all the bases I need at once prior to assembling the minis.

Beastmen: Have a bunch of really old metals I scored years ago, plus what I consider to be new metals but which are actually now older than the old metals were when I got them… I have some plastic Beasts stuff painted up (to what we will politely call ‘speed tabletop’ by my younger self many years ago) so will play with some lists and see if I can conjure some smaller forces for the investment of adding a few units here and there. Still have more plastic on hand form back in 2003 or so. I’m presently mostly playing small games of WHFB so will just need some solid core options without all the whistles and bells. This one should be my top priority but I’m not particularly energised about this one currently. Will see how we go…

Northern Alliance/Norse: Have a bunch of Norse assembled and primed form a variety of ranges (Fireforge, Reaper, Shieldwolf plus possibly some others?…) so will need to see how the Mantic go scale-wise. The rest aren’t really remotely to scale so if it land’s anywhere reasonably within the 28-32mm range I’ll call it good enough 🙂 KOW stuff is all still in the box on sprues. Not sure about the snow trolls in the starter box, posing seems a little static and homothetic so I may need to look at some conversion options.

Nightstalkers: See above, still in the box. they do look fun though 🙂

And left over from 2019:

• Kings of War Undead: Partly assembled and partly painted. In blacks, whites and NMM. Yep, it was a great idea to learn all three challenging colours/techniques simultaneously on a horde army. Would definitely recommend this approach, no drawbacks whatsoever. Pure coincidence that this project has been ‘parked’ for going on 3 years…
• Albion. May run the core units of these guys out as Britons/Gauls in SPQR (although I’m hoping that Wargames Atlantic’s Persians are released in time for me to smash out a box and run with them instead…). presently assembled, primed and zenithal skin tones done. I have some Confrontation Kelts stashed for the sexier Special/Rare options but this approach would involve taking them out of their packaging…
• Skaven. Mostly 2nd hand 8th ed starter box stuff so not much by way of support options, just a lot of fur to drybrush. Will see if I can get a combination of zenithal pre shading and dip or contrast going to get this one kicking along.
• Chaos: need to touch up the paint jobs on my old Slaanesh force, restore many broken minis and round out the beasts and daemons options.
• Kings of war Abyssals: Nabbed a small starter army box cheap a while back with the intention of using the cavalry in mortal chaos armies and the daemons as WHFB Khorne daemons but I am thinking it might do better as it’s own force. Still need to get to grips with 3rd ed…

In positive news though, I did get through nearly all of my orcs and goblins 🙂

Things I know will be getting released soon which might call me in:

• Oathmark generally…
• Frostgrave 2.0
• North Star Wargames Atlantic Wood Elves
• North Star Goblin Wolf Riders
• Mantic Naughty Dwarves
• Wargames Atlantic, I don’t know what you are presently up to once you have rolled out the Dark Age Irish but I’m suspecting it will probably end up belonging on this list too… (Edit: Never mind, have just worked out the wood elves were from Wargames Atlantic – WA, maybe we could just come to some form of retainer arrangement?…)

And ‘stuff i’d like to get done one day just for fun to get old minis on to the tabletop’:

• A Talabheim or Marienberg Empire army. By using one of the ‘rich’ provinces I can add in all the expensive units that don’t fit the fluff of my current (poorer province) Empire armies.
• Mordheim generally. Because Mordheim. You know that I’m right…
• Getting enough minis together to be able to run most low and some mid-CR level encounters in D&D. Sure, I can filed goblins, orcs and skeletons but I don’t have your standard-issue spiders, rats, oozes etc. And yes, even I should be able to sculpt an ooze from greenstuff 😉 And no, the real-life spiders in my man-cave are generally too big to work at 28mm scale, plus they never wait for their initiative to come up before making a move action…
• Alternate elf factions (Averlorn, Saphery etc). I have a couple of units that fit the fluff – not enough for a full army but would be nice to paint them up and roll them out as a themed add-on to my main pointy elf force.

And the punchline here is I’m supposed to be focusing on Historicals this year 🙂