Blitzkrieg and Barbarossa!

 I sit here now, with a whirling circle attempting to pay for an order of miniatures. This order will allow me to play some 1940 invasion of France, some operation Barbarossa, and I hope I can use the British infantry with some of my US Shermans and perhaps even 57mm guns in order to play late war Brits. I decided against buying any late war British tanks or cannon, as my order was already creeping too high in cost. 

Bring it on. 

Three orcs and a nun walk into a bar...

 I finished these Reaper Bones orcs last night, along with a gun-totin' nun and a weird knight.

I primed these a long time ago, in order to paint them with my children. They didn't get touched though. Thus over this last month I just went for it. I am mostly happy with them, although I think I should add eyes in red, and use a rustier colour to help highlight the metal. But as they stand, I can put them on the table. There is also an archer but his base isn't finished, so I left him out.

My 5-year-old painted the nun, or at least gave her her first coat of black. I finished her off. The knight is a problem. I painted his cape/cloak a long time ago. Then I stalled, not knowing what I actually wanted to do with him. He has skulls on him, and his shield looks almost like it could be made of wood, in fact, I painted the back of it brown ages ago. I wanted to use bright colours, inspired by the Witch Doctor on Diablo III. I looked on Pintrest for ideas and eventually decided to do actual skull colours, and just contrasting red and blue. I like it now. A bit gaudy though.

Adventurers from Reaper Bones

 This evening I finished off some figures. I am pleased with them. They are from my big box of Reaper Bones miniatures that I picked up in the 2012 and 2013 Kickstarters. I have barely even made a dent in them to be honest.

This is a figure that I let my five year old have a go at painting. He was largely green, and his base looked like the sky with clouds on it. In fact, I feel like you can still see some flecks of blue on the base. I painted over his greenishness with various khakis, leather colours and browns. I attempted point of light highlights on his arm, but don't think it really worked out.

I took inspiration from Diablo III for this monk. My first character on that game, well the first one I finished the game with was a kick-ass monk. I mean, this guy looks nothing like him, but I like to think they maybe know each other. The one thing I have forgotten to do is to highlight the blade with a blue. I wanted it to have a mystical air to it, like Sting from Lord of the Rings.

I am incredibly happy with my hireling. He has been getting splashes of paint added now and then for a while now, but a couple of nights ago I just went for it and filled in all of the gaps. I have, however forgotten to paint the flames in his lantern. 

While painting these, I also put flesh colour on a few other figures, and painted green flesh onto four large orcs. I intend to get those finished and play Song of Blades and Heroes again, although I can't find any of my terrain for it.

Back Water Landing Pads

 These two back-water landing areas are ready to go. They could perhaps use a little extra, but I am happy with them for now.

I have some peg spacecraft on the go, and have just spent a while sorting out my storage, which uncovered a few more stalled projects. I will get those on the table soon. I am feeling some mojo return.

Agridome Part 3

 I just need to drybrush the doorway but I like the idea of putting new things inside, and having it semi modular. The grass will stay. But trees, people, other things can come in and out.

Things have been really slow on the hobby front. A new child is a useful excuse. Busy at work is another. But to be honest I just can't be bothered. Every evening I get the children off to bed and end up just sitting in front of the TV watching stuff. I have watched some great TV though, but I find I am rewatching How I Met Your Mother, which hasn't aged well in my opinion, video essays on YouTube about films and TV, which while interesting isn't a great use of time. I just started watching TaskMaster, which is hilarious, but again, has been distracting me.

I aim to be a bit more proactive as it goes now. I think 28m fantasy miniature painting will be my go to as I didn't end up getting my huge shopping list of WW2 miniatures (hopefully for Christmas now). I just want to do more than I am doing, but finding the motivation to get it all out and sit for a bit painting, building or whatever is just hard right now.

Thanks for listening to my ramble.

I did another thing!

This is my final child. Now to get them all into gaming, painting, model building. 

Agri-Dome part 2.

 I finally got moving on this project. Well, any projects to be honest. This summer I have had a great time but have had little to no motivation to do any kind of hobbying. Here is a photo of my farming dome then. It needs some more work on the doorway area, but it is coming along. I will not stick down the building, in order to be able to put figures inside. As time goes on, I may also change what sort of agriculture goes on inside.

Rebased infantry and some building blocks.

After a month of inactivity I managed to get something done. I rebased these infantry figures, making them smaller and definitely magnetic. Here they are taking up defensive positions to stop looting.

 I have a box of wooden building blocks that have been sat around for a few years. Today I finally had a stroke of inspiration that I could use them as modular buildings. I figure if I paint windows on all four sides, put a door on two of them, and leave the tops blank, then I can have some seriously modular buildings. The round ones can be mostly glass. The long, thin ones can also make for useful buildings. If I lay them flat and stack them, then I have a high rise. If I stand them up on edge, they can be used to create the illusion of a closed in area. Sort of creating the edge of a computer game level if you see.

 

UK Games Expo 2022

 This weekend, just for the Saturday, I hustled my way up to the UK Games Expo to see what all the fuss is about. My brother visits every year, wife and kids in tow and they stay for a few days. Every year they try to convince me, a fellow, but somewhat more casual, boardgamer, to attend. Every year I respectfully decline. This year, my other brother of The Player's Aid fame was in the country for a family wedding. We all made plans to go up and attend. I didn't want to be left out so went for it. 

I now regret never going. The freedom I had this year to wander around and play whatever I felt was brilliant. I will give a breakdown of what I tried and saw in a bit. Next year I intend to take my eldest two children. I will have less freedom, but will be able to share the love of games with them a little more. The children and family section was large, and had lots of little games to try out. The cosplayers were many and friendly enough for photo ops. It was all around a good time.

 

Having sunk an inexcusable amount of hours into Skyrim, seeing this location as a miniature game was glorious. I remember my first fight here. I won't be sinking any cash into another miniatures game though.

Dragon!

Temptation to buy Skyrim miniatures rising...

Mr brother and I played a few rounds of this. It says the game takes 20 mins, but as it stood, each dogfight was taking about 3-4 minutes. Once you get caught in the opponent's gun sights it was really hard to get out of them. There were only two small plane miniatures, but they may not be the final miniatures. I would hope for actual plastic minis of the planes. 

We attempted to try another  game called Air Flix, where you have planes on disks and attempt to flick them into firing positions while avoiding flak, but the guy had sold all the copies and wasn't there on the Saturday to demo it any more.

There were other games I tried, which were fun, bought one for the family, bought a set of dice as that is customary at events like this. 

I will take my eldest two next year, I hope. It should be fun. 

Destroyed houses for WW2. Not sure manufacturer.

I painted up some more ruined houses. Unfortunately I have had these knocking around a while and don't really know who they are made by. The second story is removable. They could maybe be dusted up a little, but for now they will do nicely. 

These ones are surrounded entirely by rubble. Not sure how much I like that. I might need to pop them on a base and make it so the rubble has a non-rectangular edge to it. But as for now, they are useable.