In-de-structable...

 Captain Scarlet (dun dun dun dun - that May or not be how the theme tune actually goes)

So during the previous lockdown (my preferred one, if I’m being honest, as I got to stay at home, as opposed to the current lockdown, where I’m spending more time than ever at work) I found myself rewatching the original series of Captain Scarlet whilst doing the washing up, one of my favourite series from childhood. Around the same time, I saw that Crooked Dice had this lovely figure in the Bargains section of their online store, and I seem to recall that whilst idly browsing when I should have been sleeping he fell into my cart...

So he got cleaned up, undercoated, had a base coat of flesh applied and then spent the rest of the time sat on my painting tile watching me do other things. 

We’ve hit that stretch of the year now though where I realise that I need to get a wiggle on if I’m going to hit my target of 52 finished miniatures for the year, and so I focused on getting him finished rather than flirting from figure as they take my fancy as is my usual way of working!

No plans for any project in particular for this figure, although I know I could always expand out with some more Spectrum agents from Crooked Dice of the fancy takes me...

Finishing him brings the Tally to:

44 vs 115 = -71

So what’s next? The Tally sibling further into the negative, truth be told, as there may well already be more miniatures on order at this point...

I Spy with my little Eye...

Another mini plucked from the painting queue because it took my fancy, this time a Copplestone spy-fi type for 7tv:

Not a lot to say other than that really... Nice sculpt, Dark Reaper basecoat for the usual reasons...

Not my finest facial paintjob, and unusually I painted his pupils using an actual brush rather than a micron pen:

This is the first set of posted pictures taken using my wife's new lightbox. Better images mean you can see my painting better, which isn't necessarily a good thing...

Despite the closeness of Salute, I also bought a miniature this week. A nice chap on one of the Facebook groups had listed a bunch of out of production Doctor Who miniatures for sale, so I grabbed the 'not-Rory' that Crooked Dice used to make that I missed out on the first time round:

Also as it's Salute soon, my eBay auctions finished and some miniatures have gone off to their new homes, which leaves the Tally looking positively wacky:

9 vs -54 = +45

Not to worry though, just think of it as pre-Salute buffer...

Not-Sterling Archer...

Having recently started watching Archer on Netflix, I found myself with the urge to paint a dapper looking gentleman in a grey suit:

He's a little older looking, but passable I think:

Handily, I had the miniature (a Copplestone sculpt) already based and undercoated (and had done for... I don't know, a couple of years probably), with a basecoat on his flesh, which meant I was able to paint him in a single afternoon (rather than the 'a little here, a little there over days/weeks/months/years' approach I usually end up taking). To that end, he was painted almost entirely using a Citadel Large Brush, with the exception of the whites, which used a much sharper tool:

I forget where I read 'use the largest brush you can get away with', but it seems to be good advice - the miniature was a lot quicker to paint than usual, and hasn't suffered much quality wise (although my usual standard doesn't set the bar unreachably high, I'll admit) - it was quite nice having a brush that held paint, rather than my usual time-consuming approach where I spend as much time reloading the brush as i do actually applying paint to the miniature... Something to think about in future sessions, I think...

In the time since my last post though, I've received a couple of goodies - a halfling from Uncle Johnny that's currently an experiment in using very thin layers over a white undercoat with a black wash (that I was sure I'd already posted about and included in the tally, but apparently not), and the pair of slayers that I needed to complete my set of Marauder sculpts:

These two likely lads are currently taking a long soak in the stripping pot, and take the current tally to:

14 vs 19 = -5

Third Anniversary, and 2013 in review...

Wow, so this little irregularly-updated corner of the internet turns 3 today!

2013 was a funny old year for me personally, managing to contain both the highest of highs (getting married! Honeymooning!) and the lowest of lows, and because of this was fairly quiet hobby and blogging wise. I mean, I only managed 27 posts last year, an average of one a fortnight. I'd planned (and prepped miniatures for) a Doctor Who post to tie in with the Christmas Day episode, but alas I didn't get to actually paint them, and thus there were no posts at all in December. I mean, the thing is, I'm not any less geeky than usual - here's a picture of our headboard currently:

(I dug out some old survivor miniatures to use as alternate playing pieces in a family game of Zombies over Christmas, which are currently living in the bedroom until I get around to re-packing them)

I think part of the problem on the lack of posts front is my tendency to only post on completion of something, which when crossed with my tendency to get easily distracted and flit from project to project leads to a folder of unpublished pictures of projects that are half-finished that 'I'll get around to finishing one day', like stripping Batman Heroclix, a set of Chaos themed scatter terrain and a set of wip pictures of my old-school influenced Chaos Spawn conversion that has been sat undercoated for at least half a year now... Resolution - post what I do as I do it, which will hopefully keep momentum high...

As is now traditional, I got a White Dwarf subscription for Christmas from my good lady wife, the exclusive miniature for which is this rather nice vampire-hunting dwarf, which leaves 2013's tally at:

25 vs 441 = -416

Daaaaaaaaaaamn.

2013: -416 (25 painted)
2012: -103 (68 painted)
2011: -173 (122 painted)

The less said about that the better, I suppose - although this year's massive minus is mostly (entirely) due to stocking up on lovely multi-part plastic kits at Salute for my ASOIAF project (and I'm sure I'll pick up a couple more boxes this year to make sure that I definitely have enough bits...)

On the Christmas front, I also got some paintbrushes from one of our friends that works with my wife, which I thought was rather sweet of her (and I guess shows that my nerdity isn't as subtle as you might otherwise think):

Looking at last year's review post, let's see how wildly inaccurate my predictions for projects for the coming year were:

Path to Glory: As mentioned earlier this post, my Chaos Spawn conversion is done (but just not posted), and the entire warband has been sat undercoated waiting for my attention to swing back their way. I've got a set of half-finished Chaos Wastes scatter terrain to go with them too, that match my previously completed set of generic rocky terrain so as to be able to play some games... You'd think that the low model count needed to be able to start playing games would be a good incentive to get them finished, but hey, go figure...

Batman: What do they even paint the more recent Heroclix figures with? I've had a bunch sat in the stripping pot getting the occasional scrub for what feels like an age, and there's largely no less paint on them than the day I bought them (they are however exceptionally clean). Again, low model count needed, so it would only take a tiny, tiny amount of focus in order to have a useable set of figures...

Zombieslayer/Slayers: One day. gadget, one day... Potentially if (as rumours suggest) the next edition of Warhammer Fantasy Battle has a starter box containing Empire, that might kickstart this project, or if I get a chance to read the three latest Gotrek and Felix books that I've got waiting, but until then it stays on the backburner...

Star Wars: Again, one day, gadget, one day. Curse my tiny attention span! There's plenty of Star Wars media on the way though, so I may end up making some progress in the future...


Other bits and bobs:

I painted a number of generic fantasy miniatures, but other than that all my predictions were wildly inaccurate.

Projects for the coming year (aka the framework for next year's year in review post):

As well as all of the aforementioned half finished projects that are only a few steps from completion and posting to little internet fanfare, my (planned) projects for 2014 are:

A Song of Ice and Fire (Game of Thrones):

The project that got started after I said I wouldn't be starting an more projects - as previously mentioned (and you can potentially just about see in the previous picture), I've got a bunch of Lannisters painted, and an equivalent amount of House Stark troops converted just awaiting basing and undercoat. I've got boxes of miniatures and assorted bits set aside for this project, so it should be fairly easy to make progress (famous last words) - admittedly though, I have been fairly tempted to buy some bits to start converting some Wildlings, pretty much the only Westerosi force that I don't already have suitable miniatures for, but I think I'll be able to hold focus on the Staks versus Lannisters for now (although one day I'll get around to writing a blogpost outlining my general plans for the ASOIAF project...)

Dungeons and Dragons

Much delayed, but not forgotten...

Rise of the Planet of the Apes

The release of a new '...of the Planet of the Apes' film should hopefully inspire me to get back on track with my ROTPOTA project - I'll probably pick up an 'Aiko and Gorilla' from Bushido from GCT Miniatures (because that's a much hencher gorilla than the one I had previously bought), dig up or adapt a suitable skirmish ruleset and we're away!

Others:

The backburner projects are still there: Halo, Three Kingdoms, Doctor Who, Blood Bowl, and all the rest - although as we've seen, listing something as 'not a priority for the near future' seems to be the way to ensure that it gets some love when it comes to my hobby focus... I also sporadically get the urge to go back and try and rewrite the set of rules I was going to use for the Zombie project, that were lost when my laptop wiped a couple of years back, but that would involve literally starting from scratch...

I should also hopefully finish the display board that I mentioned in my previous post in the near future, which will allow me to start posting some more visually appealing pictures of painted miniatures (when I get around to actually finishing some, hyuck huck...)

Last but not least, when we were putting up our (artificial) Christmas Tree, one of the branches fell off:

Bad news for Christmas, but good news for wargaming craft supplies - my wife agreed that we could just have that side of the tree facing the wall, and I now have the means to experiment with making wargaming trees out of leftover bits of Christmas Tree...

Post-Salute post and the pre-Salute post that didn't post...

Strap in, this could be a long one...

Foolishly, I went out to celebrate a friend's birthday the night before Salute. There would have been a post bemoaning my own foolishness (complete with pictoral evidence of the number of empty glasses), but it didn't post (presumably as the pub we were in was a lead-lined box with no signal).
Five hours sleep later, I was up and raring to trek to Salute. The journey was relatively straightforward this year, as no-one had decided to wander onto the line like they did last year, and we managed to get to the Excel centre just after doors had opened. However, when we got to where we needed to be, we saw that the queue went a fair ways back (literally as far as the eye could see...). Trekking to the back of the queue, we found a man with a sign saying 'cash queue'. Turns out as we had tickets we didn't have to join that queue at all, and (feeling somewhat foolish) began the long walk back to the entrance...

As ever, Salute featured many, many shiny things, many of which I'll realise I somehow missed when they start appearing on other peoples' blogs. Firstly though, I failed to meet up with any other bloggers - I saw The Angry Lurker and Ray in the cash queue, but must have got the time wrong for the bloggers meetup as there was no-one I recognised by the entrance at half 1 (re-reading Ray's blog post, it turns out I should have been by the seating area - that's what I get for not reading the map and assuming it was oriented with the entrance at the side! - it also turns out that whilst I thought I was following Ray's blog, blogger disagreed with me, but that's now fixed). I saw the back of Tomsche's head (well, his Pikachu hat) at the start of the day but didn't see him again to say hey; I walked past 6milphil and didn't twig who it was until afterwards... Basically, I suck at networking.

On to the pictures (alas, I only took a couple, as I was busy walking round gawping at things and scrabbling through buckets):

Epic 7TV table from those wonderful chaps (and chapesses) at Crooked Dice. Shiny.

VBCW table (presumably hosted by GWP?) that I had to walk away from as it was making me want to buy things from Dixon and Musketeer...

Captain Scarlet will always be aces in my books...

There's just something about a trench table that appeals to me. Especially a trench table with details like this:

Hee hee. Onto the main body of the post though: the loot!

• The freebie mini (the lovely Aztec looking chap)
• A freebie stapled to a hinchcliffe catalogue (something historical, I chose the one with the biggest hat)
• 'Aaron', the not-Kick-Ass from Hasslefree (I started to think I'd imagined him, but the ever lovely Sally found me one, and gave me a goodie bag and a free sheet of scenery stickers - huzzah!)
• A handful of Star Wars Miniatures Droids - annoyingly, the ones I really wanted (various R4 and R5 Droids) turned out to be out of stock, but the nice man at Tritex games said he'd send them post free if I emailed him.
• Crooked Dice Minion specialists and a couple of head sprues for conversions (one with a welding mask to put on the minion with the flamethrower, and one with some beret sporting chaps heads)
• A Skaven Jezzail, because it was £3 (they're 3 for £30 new!)
• An SJS Judge (because they're awesome)as well as a couple of minis that were in a bucket on the Mongoose stand (a Sky Surfer, a Blood Bowl Skaven player and an old-school GW beastman)
• Some Amera craters, because I need me some generic terrain and I was intrigued about these after seeing how nicely these vac-formed terrain pieces can look in Kevin Dallimore's book
• Knight Models Boba Fett. I begrudge paying £13 for a single miniature, but then again he's absolutely beautiful (and anyway, it's cheaper than buying a less nice one from Wizards of the Coast). I ummed and ahhed over buying this for a little while - the man on the stand saw me gazing lovingly at it and pointed out that I had Boba Fett holding a boombox on my T-Shirt... I managed to resist for about half an hour after that, but eventually caved. When I got back there were none left on the stand, but luckily the chap had one stashed away in a box!
• A Salute bag, to store my loot. Alas, neither I nor Uncle Johnny had a golden ticket to win a free storage case. Next time gadget, next time...

Not as bad as I'd imagined (or hoped), which brings the tally to:

39 vs 79 = -40

There were a few other things I either couldn't get or almost got - I fancied some more scenery, but other than the Amera craters there was nothing that really grabbed my fancy; I was tempted by some VBCW, but since Gripping Beast didn't seem to have the schoolboys that they do I was able to resist the allure of Musketeer and Dixon; I almost picked up some Malifaux from Simpe Miniature Games as they had a 'buy two starters and get the rulebook free!' deal on, until I relised that I'd be spending fifty quid to save a tenner on sixty quids worth of stuff that I didn't really fancy much...

After trekking back to Canterbury, Uncle Johnny and I got to chatting about the new GW paints, which led to popping into the local stoe, which led to me buying some paints. And a book. It's a nice looking book though (the Blood in the Borderlands one) so that make it okay I guess. I even got a replacement backpack for the Witch Hunter I got for Easter after the staffer heard me bemoaning the quality of Finecast to John. There goes my planned 'Failcast' post then...

2011 in review, and looking forward to the future...

Well, a year in already! (well, technically the blog is a year old tomorrow, but let's not quibble over details). 9,368 page views is a pretty respectable amount, especially considering the fact that I had a slump that lasted a couple of months and meant no new posts...

Looking back at the projects listed in my original post, we can make a breakdown of productivity for the past year:

Zombies: Miniatures painted, rules lost in laptop debacle.
Three Kingdoms: No progress made, still not a single finished figure.
Firefly: Three miniatures painted.
Strange Aeons: the project that got the most love, I now have just enough miniatures to actually start playing some games! I loaned the rulebook to one of the guys at work though, so I probably won't get a game in for a little while...
Doctor Who: Bits done here and there, but still not enough to play an actual game (although if I could just focus for long enough, I should have enough miniatures to play the Canary Wharf scenarios...)
VSF: no progress made, not even on the converted miniatures that sit mocking me in their drawers...
AEWWII: dead project. The only miniature I have on the go for this is a Captain America, and I can't yet bring myself to paint all the tiny white stars on his shield. There's some Tamiya tanks in a box for this project though, so I might get round to building and painting them eventually.
Warmachine: I sometimes take these miniatures out of their drawers and boxes, sigh, and then pack them away again.
Anima Tactics: Pretty much the same as Warmachine, I've four or five half painted miniatures that just don't grab my attention when I'm choosing what to work on.
Evil Genius/7tv: Only two finished miniatures so far, but tons more to come...
Marvel Superheroes: Percentage-wise, one of the most expanded projects. It's probably the fact that each part is only a single miniature, which is so different to everything else in my collection, that keeps me interested.
GW: combining all the projects into one, we get: blah. Yes, that's a giant in the picture. No, he probably won't get painted next year either.

...

Well, I'm not swearing off GW completely, I'm still halfway through painting my Blood Bowl team, planning to paint a max-size unit of Dwarf Slayers, epic Zombieslayer-inspired Undead army (I've got Kemmler, Krell and the Wyvern) as well as being tempted by Skaven, but who knows what I'll actually get done.

As far as new projects go, it's the generic fantasy that is the biggest, and most likely to get other bits added to it, purely due to it's breadth, and my inability to focus on an particular thing for more than a week or so.

As it's the last day of the year, it's the last time we see the tally looking like this:

122 vs 295 = -173

before we reset to zero tomorrow. Hurrah! Although I kinda wish I'd bought a load of miniatures to go on this tally rather than next year's, since this one was already beyond redemption...

Looking forward to next year, there's a number of new projects I'm considering starting. I'm loving Halo at the minute, and so quite fancy repainting some Heroclix for that. Star Wars is a project that's been nipping at my imagination for some time now, primarily due to the number of plastic prepaints I own - I think it reveals something about my character though that I haven't yet started the project because I don't have enough miniatures to make a detachment of Stormtroopers as described in the old miniature battles book - despite the fact that I'm unlikely to ever need a detachment, and the fact that if I started painting a detachment I'd rapidly get bored and wander off to do something else. Gundam and Evangelion would be awesome to do too, but luckily the fact that they're not in God's True Scale has stopped me from starting either of those (yet). Ooh, and Planet of the Apes - I could use survivor miniatures from the Zombie project for this, meaning I'd only need to convert and paint various chimps, gorillas and orangs armed with makeshift spears... well, an expansion of a project doesn't count as a new project surely?

I might need to do something to sort out my productivity too. These days, I have a couple of drawers of miniatures in various stages of completion, and spend almost as much time going through minis choosing what to paint as I do actually painting, which combined with the fact that what I fancy painting changes from session to session results in how rarely I ever actually complete a miniature (the Christmas Zombies posted recently were the fist time I'd painted something in one session in longer than I can remember). A few years back, when I was just starting my AEWWII project, I had a system. I had three tiny trays (that were originally dividers in the box I store most of my paints in), each probably 2x3". I'd only paint what was on one of those trays, and couldn't start something new until I'd cleared a space by completing something else. Each tray could hold maybe three miniatures at a push, and you'd be amazed at the number of miniatures I finished purely because I'd just bought something else that I really couldn't wait to paint. Admittedly, I don't think I have the willpower to be that strict with myself these days, but it's something to consider...

Kung fu, discourse and lighting...

So, after claiming the end of radio silence... nothing for a while. 

I blame a multitude of factors: moving house, halo 2, and in some cases the fact that I've been staring at certain half-painted miniatures for long enough that I'm considering thowing them away and buying new, exciting, shinier ones (and yes, I realise that the sensible option would be to take them from half-painted to fully painted, but hey, sometimes your brain just wants to make excuses to buy new miniatures).

Despite all this, after a period of approximately eight hours of procrastination today (during which I watched several episodes of Adventure Time, drank several coffees, and went out for several cigarettes, so it's arguably not technically a wasted day) I managed to actually finish some miniatures:

A couple of dudes from Black Hat that will serve various roles - the sorceror type I see as being an ally for Conan (since I'm sure there should be at least one non-evil magic user in the universe), but can also slot into the generic fantasy project (like most anything else that gets the conan tag); whereas the martial artist is a monk for the 'paint a miniature for each dungeons and dragons class' that I shamelessly stole from EvilCartoonist and then didn't really do anything with, as well as being able to stand in as a martial artist for 7tv...

Onto the discourse part of the title: there are many miniatures I want, and many projects I want to start. I have a terrible problem with considering every movie I see and every game I play in terms of what 28mm miniatures I could buy to use for it, but never actually finish anything as I've lready started two more projects. I rewatched Sucker-punch and started planning conversions, I'm playing Halo 2 at the minute and planning on repainting some clix (after christmas though, let's hope Santa brings me a brick). I think I've found the secret though, the answer to my problem: 'give it a week'. After a week, I'll have either lost interest, or discovered another three things I want to do, or actually be considering starting something as a project. But even then, it's likely another week will pass before I actually start anything, as I'll have been distracted by something else shiny.

And so, onto the final part of the title: we need better lights in the Craft Room. That was it.

Which, as usual, brings us to:

118 vs 293 = -175

There are 23 days left of the year. If I painted 7.6 miniatures a day every day, I could end up with a score of -1. I've painted two miniatures in the last month, and truth be told they were already more than halfway done. I've said it before and I'll say it again, roll on the new year clock reset!

Back on the horse! (Redux)

Back in the swing of things, and actually painting miniatures, who knows how long it will last?

But before we get into all that, a slight diversion - I got taken to the Doctor Who Experience by my lovely young lady for my birthday! It was awesome, but can really be summed up in two pictures:

Olly loves Cybermen, but fears the scarecrow. There were many more pictures taken (although Nicole was less than impressed when I asked for front side and isometric views of every costume for painting reference...), but I think these two say it best...

Anyways, onto the miniatures (and apologies in advance for the worse than usual pictures, it's a new camera and a new light that needs a daylight bulb hampered by my measly skills):

An exotic bodyguard for 7tv to guard my evil genius whilst lazing around in a skimpy bikini -

She's from Copplestone iirc, and was my first time experimenting with a Foundry triad (Oriental Flesh). I quite liked using the triad, as it made painting flesh a lot more straightforward, and might pick up some more in future (curse Foundry's long-lamented postal charges, I may have to wait until next Salute to pick up the next batch...)

The Vulture! He's been sat in his base colours for... I don't know, a couple of years, but I finally got round to finishing him off. He's a repainted heroclix fig, with all the blurry facial detail and wacky scale that entails, but he was one of the first heroclix figs I ever got, so still holds a certain charm. With him done, I'm 66.66% of the way to having my own non-canon Sinister Six! (Although if I were to go canon, I'd probably go for the second line-up, consisting of:

• Doctor Octopus
• Mysterio
• Electro
• Sandman
• Vulture
• Hobgoblin

as that's who I'd most fancy painting).

And last but not least, some goons from Heresy, for use as technician types for 7tv (yeah, they had ipads then, what of it?) and SF goons for Doctor Who. I don't know why, but I do love to see a wedding ring on a miniature.

And thus, to the tally:

97 vs 270 = -173

Still not great, but getting better (and hey, we've almost hit a hundred finished minis!) - fingers crossed I can hold back from restarting Mass Effect (after all my xbox saves got wiped, I couldn't bring myself to start the big games again, but I'm getting a hankering...). Then again, it's only the fact that I can't seem to find my copy of Zombieslayer to re-read that's stopping me from building an old-school Undead Warhammer army (well, old-school to me at least, I'm only young); Kemmler leading blocks of zombies with zombie Wyverns, with none of this Vampire Lord malarky... Eh, it could go either way really...

This slump, this slump, this slump...

...she's in my head (to intentionally misquote The Presidents of the United States of America...)

So yeah, three and a half months and no updates. I mean, I've only actually cracked out the brushes and paints once in that time, and even then I only managed a couple of layers on a handful of minis before giving up and packing away. I mean, my desk currently looks like this:

I don't know what happened really to kill my desire to paint. It may have started with deciding to replay both Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic games, which reignited my interest in console gaming (which I hadn't really touched for a few months beforehand), and starting to play Magic again can't have helped. If anything, the main blow may have been my laptop suddenly refusing to connect to the internet (I'm on my young lady's currently), restricting my access to Lead Adventure and the multitude of awesome blogs I follow, meaning I have to come up with my own enthusiasm for the hobby rather than being enervated by everyone else's...

That's not to say I've not been considering several additional projects - Conan is awesome, full stop, and I could recycle generic fantasy monster minis from the dnd project; I've been playing a lot of Dynasty Warriors: Gundam recently, and looking lovingly at HLJ...; I read most of Joe Abercrombie's novels, and started considering how I'd adapt War of the Ring to game it... But for now, I'm trying not to buy any more miniatures for the immediate future (even though em4 have an awesome barbarian with a square-cut fringe...)

Despite saying I'm not buying any more miniatures, more have arrived since the last post:

A lovely Malcadon from Jimchenko, because Necromunda is awesome, and now I have one of each of the four original Spyrers. I mean, come on, even I can paint four miniatures, right?

The winners of the Frothers Cthuldo sculpting competition (as is traditional, something went wrong with the order, but they turned up eventually).

And a whole mess of goodies from Crooked Dice! Which reminds me, I'm sure there was an email saying good things would happen if I placed an order after the 21st of August... and there's the summer special... [right, just one order, that doesn't count right?]

Which brings the tally to:

90 vs 270 = -180! (which has to be bellowed in the style of Bullseye...)

Stupid tally. What started out as a motivational device soon became a rod for my back. But hey, I've started so I'll finish (curse you ridiculously cheap box of many miniatures earlier in the year...)

Thinking about it, I also acquired a copy of Advanced Heroquest (complete) and a copy of Adeptus Mechanicus (with extras) in late May, but I can't be doing with digging them out and counting the miniatures (especially considering one of the extras in the AM box was a box of hundreds of epic-scale Space Marines...) They're more like board games anyway [he lies to himself]... I'll probably sell the copy of AM at some point, all I really wanted was some teeny tiny Space Marines so that one day I could make a 28mm scale GW...

Back to my original point though - the slump. Today I got out the paints, got out the tray of half-painted miniatures, sighed, and put it all away again. Determined to do something hobby-related today though, I decided to dig out the stripping pot. Two and a half hours later, I was left with:

Some Denizen robots and consoles (that will eventually live in a 7tv Evil Genius lair), and some gw bits and bobs - I'm sure Fabius' backpack had previously been stripped, I just wish I knew where it was... And going back to my previous post, what's that? New codex for Sisters of Battle? Guess I was right...

And as is a law of nature, when 8 things come out of something, it makes sense to put 9 in:

Old-school Slayers! One day, I will have a unit of 30 Slayers. This I swear to you now, on my honour. It originally started out as 'I will paint Gotrek and Felix' (don't worry, Gotrek is in the jar too) but these things have a habit of escalating...

I should probably do a post at some point about the contents of my stripping jar, some of the minis have been in there for several years (although I might have to slip some 'cooler' bits in there, since it's mostly gw stuff in there...)

Which is where this post ends. Will our intrepid host get his mojo back? Will he ever finish a project? Will he ever see the top of his desk again?

Sa-loot!

Yup, it's the inevitable post-Salute 2011 post, as seems to be dominating the blogosphere currently. Unfortunately, due to being perhaps the worst blogger ever, I forgot to take the camera (and must have walked past it at least three times whilst getting ready in the morning). On the other hand, if I hadn't of forgotten the camera, I wouldn't have been texting Uncle Johnny bemoaning my own foolishness whilst walking to meet him, which would have meant he'd have remained asleep at home, along with our coach tickets. So I guess there's a silver lining there, if nothing else. I did manage to take a couple of pics before we left using Uncle Johnny's spy-fi telephone though, so I'll post them up once he forwards them my way.

Getting up to Salute wasn't too bad (I can deal with the early morning start as long as I have access to coffee and chainsmoking), although as soon as we got on the Underground, the train was brought to a grinding halt by a 'trespasser' on the line. Cue much bemoaning of the foolishness of people going for a wander in tunnels and an overland trek to Westminster (only partially slowed by my terrible geography skills) and we were back on our way. What's nice was that once we reached a certain point in our journey, navigation became simply a case of 'follow the men with beards'.

The show itself was great - far too much to take in, and I'm still seeing things on other peoples' blogs that I missed! There was an awful lot of nice games on display, but special mention should go to Crooked Dice - lovely chaps, lovely minis, lovely looking games (although all the slots were filled by the time I got there - next time, Gadget, next time...) - It was cool to meet Karl (Crooked Dice South) as well, although it was a bit weird meeting someone you've previously only spoken to via the internet - and I forgive him for overcharging me 50p (there was an awful lot going on around their stand).

On the 'meeting people you've previously only spoken to via the internet' front, I may need to get myincubliss tattooed somewhere on my body, or else change my internet name to something more manly (McAwesome?) or generic, as it's a bit weird introducing yourself as your handle...

On to the purchases... There were many, many lovely shiny things there. I had a bit of a wander at first, scoping out what sort of wares were on offer before returning to dole over ever-increasing amounts of cash rather than just leaping in bothfeet first. Which is probably for the best, as several things I'd seen had sold out by the time I returned, like the Perry Ninjas I only remembered I wanted when I saw a youngster waving the last pack at his father... Still, there were many things that were purchased, the majority of which are readily available at any time on the internet. At the same time, I'm a terrible sucker for buying miniatures placed in front of me that I'd been putting off ordering online (then again, I'm a terrible sucker for buying miniatures placed in front of me full stop). By the end of the day, I'd accrued the following:

Only 33 miniatures (including the freebie for attending), which is a lot less than I thought I'd bought. I managed to avoid the temptation of the various buckets of mage knight and heroclix, but that was mostly due to not fancying crouching down on the floor for extended periods of time to sift through them. Also, it's probably for the best that I didn't have a read of Uncle Johnny's newly acquired copy of Hail Caesar until we were on the coach home, otherwise I'd have likely bought a couple of hundred Ancient Britons to pit against his Romans or Germans... (in other news, whilst googling to double check the name of the rulebook, I discovered that Warlord are running a Tale of IV gamers over on their site, which I've decided not to read yet lest my love of the 'four gamers' format encourage me to buy more miniatures...). As well as all the various minis destined for future service in Strange Aeons and dnd (including some random minis I picked out of a pot), I picked up the Foundry Oriental Flesh Triad, which I'd wanted for a while but was loathe to pay the £8 postage to get it direct. I might even paint some minis for my Three Kingdoms project now (but don't hold your breath).

With the inclusion of that little lot, the tally to date is as follows:

80 vs 235 = -155

Hopefully my refired enthusiasm for 7tv will result in some more miniatures getting finished.

What's that? Refired enthusiasm for 7tv? Look what was waiting for me when I got home from Salute (after a ridiculous amoung of food at Wagamama's, that is):

Alas, Royal Mail managed to take a chunk out of the top-right corner, but that doesn't detract from how ridiculously cool this is. I had the pdf for pre-ordering, but it's not quite the same as having the book in your hands. I won't go into any more depth than that here, otherwise this post will double in length as I heap praise after praise on the book and those lovely chaps over at Crooked Dice.

Alongside that came the limited 'Battle for Canary Wharf' booklet, which again I already had as a pdf, but is really rather nice to own. Also, I've managed to acquire most of the miniatures I'd need to play all the scenarios in the booklet, so this might even get some practical use at some point...

A whole lotta evil and a hairy guy...

Well, to get the usual business out of the way:

Yes yes, minus one to the tally, I'm a bit rubbish really - although in my defence I stuck a 99p bid on him on ebay and forgot all about it until the email telling me I'd won arrived a few days later - he'll go into the stripping pot with all those other unfortunate souls, hoping to one day see the business end of a paintbrush...

On a more positive note, I managed to finish a whole bunch of miniatures!

Ahh, lovely lovely single colour easy to paint nightgaunts, how the tally loves thee. I'd originally planned to only buy one, as that's probably all I'd really need for Strange Aeons, but they're just so cute! Well, cute for a faceless haunter of the night... Who am I kidding, they tickle people with those barbed tails. But they do it silently...

I know, I'm surprised too, this makes two lots finished from a package that arrived last week, normally it takes me a few months (sometimes years) from receiving miniatures to actually painting them! A nice 'man in a suit' type alien, suitable for menacing the good Doctor, or perhaps used as a terrible experiment gone wrong unleashed by some evil genius [cue seamless segue]

Boom! My 7tv rulebook is in the post, so I thought I should at least have one miniature finished expressly for use with it. And look, he has an adorable kitty!

Which admittedly probably isn't meant to be photographed at such close range, but hey, just look at his little face... In other news, there are some femdroids currently winging their way to me to add to the growing collection of 'undercoated miniatures for 7tv'.

I even managed to finish off a miniature that's been in the painting queue for a ridiculous amount of time, this zombie from the Frothers sculpting competition set.

I even spent several minutes with a pin teasing TCR so that it looked like the blood spilling from the severed head was following the laws of gravity and flowing down the gulley between two tiles towards the open drain. Because it's the little things that make me chuckle. Also, I'm sad like that.

The zombie project has fallen off my radar a little bit, as there's so many other projects demanding my attention (the span of which isn't exactly great). Then again, I've got a decent number of zombies finished, and the rules are at least half done, so I can easily pick it back up when my mood swings back that way (as it inevitably will).

Last but not least, we have:

A barbarian! 2 classes down, only a dozen or so to go! I really like this miniature, it was an absolute joy to paint, which meant I spent a little more time on it than usual (although it's hard to tell with pictures this close up).

As is inevitable, we come to the tally:

80 vs 202 = -122

I wish I could say that I'm not going to buy any more miniatures this year, that I'm going to power on and even up those numbers, but today Uncle Johnny called and asked if I wanted to go to Salute...