Stuck at Home; Keeping myself sane

Well I’ve been stuck at home since the end of March, which has meant I’ve managed to get plethora of miniatures painted. On the 28mm side of things I’ve painted 97 miniatures along with built and painted 6 pieces of terrain and finally built the Stoic Arms by 4Ground. I’ve also finished all my 28mm Bolt Action tanks, a couple of vehicles for Team Yankee and the German infantry from the Flames of War starter box, Hit the Beach.

I’ve managed to be quite productive hobby wise managing to plow through quite a lot of miniatures, yet I still have a massive grey army in boxes and draws. This has made me consider slimming down some of the grey army.

Bolt Action

For starters I finally finished off all the tanks that I had built, and part painted which was quite satisfying to have those on the shelf all finished ready to go on the battlefield. I’ve also managed to get some infantry painted which includes some German infantry as well as some British Desert War SAS. I’ve still have several miniatures to paint for the British Desert War force, and my Late War Germans.

Also, in a box waiting to be built is a box of Perry Miniatures US infantry, the aim of this box is to be used for Korea and Late WW2. I made a stock take of my Bolt Action forces a few weeks back to work out what I had and also to discover what I needed for each force. My US force needs a couple of vehicles and I’m planning to pick up a Sherman and a Greyhound. The Brits need a couple of LRDG vehicles, and I may get another Bren Gun carrier.

One of the units I did paint up recently was a platoon of Chindits from Warlord, these are all metal single piece miniatures, being British infantry they’re not too difficult to paint up quick and easily, due to the limited colour palette. My plan is to use them as Brits fighting in Korea, these will be attached to my US force.

Sigmar

Under Sigmar includes miniatures for Warcry, Shadespire and Mordhiem as these are the three games I currently play.  I’ve managed to paint up two Shadespire warbands, the first was the Skaven warband; Spiteclaw’s Swarm. I painted these in a dirty look as I wanted them to look like they live underground. The second warband I painted up was Garrek’s Reavers, these are really nice minis and I found them quite easy and quick to paint up. I’m quite happy with the end result and plan to use them in all three games I play.

I also managed to finish the Sigmar miniatures I was painting with metallics and contrast paint. This was mainly an experimentation exploring how well contrast, ashes and glazes would work over a shiny metallic paint. Some paints worked really well such as Contrast Blood Angels Red, it gave it a metallic red colour much like you see on cars. Other colours didn’t work at all One of those was Ultramarine Blue contrast. I was hoping to get a similar result as I got using the red, but the end result was disappointing. Especially when you compare them to some miniatures, I painted last year mixing blue and metallic paint the old-fashioned way building up thin layers of \silver mixed with blue.

Walking Dead

I’ve finally managed to paint all the zombies from the starter set and all my objective markers, this means I finally have a fully painted core set of a game…Yes I have finally finished painting a core set lol. This means I now have only a few miniatures to paint for my Walking Dead collection.

Once these are done, I’ll need to start on the miniatures from the other Walking Dead game I have, No Sanctuary. I have the core set and the What Lies Ahead expansion. These are truer scale whereas miniatures compared to Mantic’s Walking Dead are slightly heroic scale. The other difference is the miniatures from No Sanctuary are based on the TV series characters rather than the comics.

Reality’s Edge

I recently picked up a copy of the new Sci-Fi skirmish game by Osprey Miniatures Reality’s Edge and being really excited by this game I promptly rummaged through my boxes of minis looking for suitable miniatures to use. I came across three I quite liked two of which are by Studio McVey, from the Sedition Wars range.

So, coupled together with a couple a miniatures I painted some time ago I now have a small starting faction ready to play with. I now need to source another faction/war band so I can introduce the game to friends and try to persuade Coco to have a go at playing the game. Fortunately, I don’t need to find terrain to play, as I have a couple of scenery packs for Infinity in card. These will be ideal for playing Reality’s Edge.

SPQR/Mortal Gods

So far, I’ve painted on a few models for these games, which includes a Roman Centurion and the Macedonian Royal Guard command group. The plan is to start painting the rest of the miniatures I’ve built so far, along with the Macedonian Heroes set from Warlord.

40K

Now after I quit playing 40K when it was in 6^th edition, I did say I wouldn’t return to the game and I had no intention of doing so until they announced 9^th Edition a couple of weeks back. Now I’ve no intention of building a massive army like I did in the past. My plan is to build 500-750-point force, as I really don’t want to play big games that take hours. The fact the new edition will have a mode of play called Crusade, which will allow you play anything from a combat patrol scale game right up to a massive Armageddon sized battle. I have a 500-point Eldar force that was part built, and I’ve dug that out and started building units ready for painting. I also have a small Dark Eldar force, that’s currently about 350-400 points that also part built and I’ll take this up to 750.

I’m also interested in building a Death Guard force of 500-point force as well, with this in mind I painted a Myphitic Bight-Hauler that I had in preparation for this. I’ve included a short article/tutorial on how I painted this in this issue.

I also had some Primaris Marines I need to finish painting for my Kill Team warband and so these are currently on the painting desk as I write. I had decided to paint them up as Ultra Marines as I’ve never painted this colour scheme previously.

Fantasy Minatures

I’ve managed to paint a few random fantasy miniatures just to break up the task of painting warbands and groups of miniatures. One of these was a Giant miniature I picked up at last years UKGE for £3 (which is about $4) a bargain. I the giant is a boardgame piece from Dungeons and Dragons Assault of the Dragons. Painted up he’s not a bad miniature and will work well in games such as Frostgrave.

Terrain Project

My plan when I was first sent home on furlough from  my job was to start my terrain project, but this ground to a halt once I realised I didn’t have enough basing material and other bits and pieces to start on the modular boards. So, with that in mind I made to decision to build and paint some of the buildings I have instead, so at least I’ve made a start on the project. I had three buildings from Renedra which includes the large rural barn, these were quickly built and painted. I’ve also built a couple of the MDF buildings I have but as yet I’ve not undercoated them mainly due to the weather taking a turn for the worse, which has prevented me from spray painting them.

I plan to paint up the Terracotta figures I have which I plan to use as old ruins on the board. So, I’ll paint these up ready to go onto the board. I also have a couple of other bits and pieces that I plan to use as part of the ruins, and these will also be painted up in preparation.

Once I start the process of building the modular board tiles I’ll write up some articles and tutorials describing the build process.