Mar 31 2025

Clank Cultists

As I stated in my last post, I’ve been playing Clank Legacy as of late. One of my friends graciously volunteered to paint all of the models. Foolishly, two of us decided to paint our own though…

It all started with the elf. This poor, unsuspecting model suffered an unfortunate accident—an arm, snapped clean off, leaving it looking more like an unfortunate adventurer who had just lost a battle with a particularly aggressive mimic. Enter my friend Marshal, who took one look at the situation and decided that, rather than a boring old “fix,” we needed something more dramatic. So, naturally, he grabbed a Genestealer Cultist arm from his bits box, slapped it onto the elf, and declared it a masterpiece. And honestly? He wasn’t wrong. With the right paint job, this elf looked less like a tragic accident victim and more like an eldritch horror enthusiast, now fully committed to the cause of whatever ancient horror had gifted him his new limb.

Seeing this abomination—I mean, work of art—inspired me. If we were going off the deep end, why stop at a single, unsettling model? The halfling was just sitting there, so normal, so unassuming, practically begging for some unnecessary but absolutely spectacular body horror. So, with the reckless abandon of a hobbyist who is out of practice but too stubborn to care, I grabbed my hobby knife and a long-forgotten box of Tyranid bits.

What followed was an impromptu surgical procedure that left the poor halfling missing a significant portion of his original body but gaining a particularly gruesome severed Tervigon head as a trophy. Now, I’d love to tell you this was a seamless, well-planned conversion, but in reality, there was a lot of hacking, cursing, and staring at tiny pieces of plastic while muttering, “Well, I guess that’s staying there now.”

By the time I finished, the halfling had transformed from an innocent bystander into a deranged monster hunter, dragging his oversized trophy along behind him like some grotesque victory prize. Was it practical? Absolutely not. Did it make sense? Not even a little. But did it look incredible on the board next to the eldritch elf? You bet.

At the end of the day, I may be out of practice, and my hobby knife skills might be more “frantic gremlin” than “master artisan,” but that’s part of the fun. Clank Legacy may be about deck-building and dungeon-crawling, but our version now has an extra twist: mutant horror-fantasy gone off the rails. And honestly, I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Feb 28 2025

Trying something new

It’s been ages since I’ve posted. I’ve been off again and on again with hobby stuff (mostly off), but figured I’d throw some progress I made up here.

I’ve been playing Clank Legacy and 3D printed the below on a whim. I figured he could use a coat of paint…

You can find this model yourself for printing here:

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:5361342

Jun 17 2019

Batrep: Imperial Knights vs. Hive Fleet Proteus (55 PL)

It has been some time since any of my local group has played a game of 40k. We’ve bantered about possibly playing a game sometime, and even suggested that we’re overdue for an Apoc game (and, with the impending re-release of the supplement, we’re due to host one).

It’s unusual–at least, as of late–for there to be enough interest, that we decided to capitalize on it and supplant our regularly scheduled board game night with games of 40k. In total, Sam, Brandon, and Simon showed up (a truly unusual cast of characters), and we paired up for games of 40k.

I wound up paired up against Sam and his army of knights. Sadly, I hadn’t made my list yet, and didn’t want to be seen as engineering against him. I also wasn’t particularly feeling like building a list, so I just went with quick and easy…

Sam’s Imperial Knights

1x Knight Warden (Warlord)
- Avenger Gatling Cannon
- Reaper Chainsword
- Icarus Autocannons
2x Armiger Helverins
2x Armiger Warglaives

I didn’t ask for a list from him, but given that he only had five models, I figure I can reasonably piece together what he had. Though I’ve not faced his Armigers before, I’d heard of them and this seems like a logical force that Sam would use on a regular basis. In short, it wouldn’t have taken that much effort me to have come up with exactly what he was playing, should I have wanted to engineer against it. Continue reading →

Apr 24 2019

Painting Termagants (again)

Though I’ve only played one game of 40k in close to six months, I’m starting to get an itch. Well, maybe not so much an itch, but at least I feel apprehension towards the idea of playing the game. While that isn’t exactly high praise, it’s at least a start!

So, I started working myself up to speed by painting a couple of Zombicide models, which I’ve since finished. So now, I’m moving on to Tyranids. The irony isn’t lost on me that I started with something that actually took more skill and time per model to complete. The thing is, that painting Tyranids en masse takes more than just talent–it takes staying power. I wanted to see if I had it in me to knock out at least a couple of models before I started painting 30 at once.

Yup, that’s what I went ahead and did. I’m not exactly certain why I have 30 ‘gaunts laying around, but sure enough I do. I originally had paid a friend, Mitch, to paint these, and he eventually gave up and brought them back to me hat in hand, so they were partially started. Mitch moved out of state in July of last year, so they’ve been sitting around at least that long. If I sleuth around more, I recall he gave them back on the night of a MTG draft (which, after a bit of searching turns out to be Ixalan–which although I posted it on June 4th, it turns out the draft night was actually May 18th).

That’s a long winded way of saying that it’s been nearly a year since I got these back from a failed outsource painting experience. I don’t even recall when I’d purchased these…

The good news is that they’re all armed with devourers, so they should shred up whatever opponent I throw them on the table for. Well, that’s if and when they get painted.

For now, let’s call these decided a “work in progress.” More to come on them eventually…

Apr 22 2019

Zombicide Completion??

My previous post had me painting up some of the final models in my Zombicide board game, and this may prove to be the final post on the subject. If you’re not up to date on the subject, I spent a few months in early 2016 (can it really have been that long ago?) painting up a few hundred models for a board game called Zombicide. That included a great deal of Zombies, but also what appears to be about 72 character models as well.

Last post I explained that my goal here wasn’t to try to paint these to a super high standard, but rather to get a reasonable color match so that you could easily discern which figure was yours during the game. This time around, I wound up painting up the Snipers & Handymen, and I think I kind of failed at my original goal.

Granted, I think with both sets of figures, you can tell who they’re supposed to be. The colors are roughly matching, but rough is the right term. It was really the greens that did me in, because I tried to paint their greens with a custom paint I had made before labeled as “ammo can.” My thought was that it was reasonably close and it would work as a color for fatigues. Clearly, it’s passable, but it’s not remotely close to the right shade of green from either picture.

Still, I think you can easily tell, based upon the hats and models’ stances, which models are which.

The eyes on the handymen give them a distinctly Anime vibe, but I’m not exactly sure why that is. Anime figures have large eyes, so that makes sense–but I had even larger eyes on the gunmen, and they didn’t have that same feeling to me.

So yeah, they’re not perfect, but these are glorified equipment cards for a game that rarely see the table (though we do play Zombicide with some level of frequency, these particular cards are a bit of a rarity). They also served as a little inspiration to get me into painting again–and maybe as a gateway to playing 40k one day. I think in that regard, I can call these guys a success.