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Thanks Zahnib. Sam is probably the member of the Fellowship i'm most pleased with. The plastic kits still hold up really well I think. As far as I can see it tends to be the faces that gum up the works. Orcs/Rohirrim/Uruks and Goblins all have a couple of gammy faces. The Gondorians/Easterlings/Morannon Orcs/Dead of Dunharrow all still cast up quite well though.

Thanks IGtR! I appreciate it.

~~~~~


OK, no Middle-earth today, but I've gotten back on track with that hoplite bust I started on towards the end of last year.

Back in Feb I painted his helmet up.


Over the last few days I've slowly been adding layers to his chest, culminating in this.


Now it's not done, but I think I've missed a step somewhere along the way. As it doesn't feel quite right. We'll see once I finish it off later today.

Lovely job on the forces of evil. The bust is also looking nice. I look forward to seeing how you wrap it up.

Wow the Hoplite bust looks fantastic! Really like how you did the metal on the cuirass.

Good to see you back posting shrub. The Orcs’s look great, especially the variety of shades/colours. One trick I did with my grey bin a while back was to pick a colour and put it on a different place on each mini in a row. It allowed for batch painting whilst making identical minis look different(ish).

The bust is looking really great, very nice effect on the chest piece too.

I think the Mines of Moria boxset was the turning point for me. I don't know what changed but those models were rough! The later sets looked like they got back on track though.

That bust is looking great, nice opportunity to paint something a bit lager. Look forward to seeing your progress on it

Great looking horde, but the Hoplite bust looks very cool, especially the gold.

Beautiful looking lotr minis, the rohirrim cloaks in particular are great. You have an excellent painting style.

The style then works really well on that hoplite, that beaten bronze armour has such lustre. He's clearly been at it with the spit polish!

youwashock wrote:Lovely job on the forces of evil. The bust is also looking nice. I look forward to seeing how you wrap it up.

Thanks YWS! It's amost there. The bust itself is done, I just have to nail down the plinth.

The Red Hobbit wrote:Wow the Hoplite bust looks fantastic! Really like how you did the metal on the cuirass.

Cheers! The cuirass and helmet are painted in the same vain as this but with metallics instead of greens. And glazed with a light gold at the very end.

gobert wrote:Good to see you back posting shrub. The Orcs’s look great, especially the variety of shades/colours. One trick I did with my grey bin a while back was to pick a colour and put it on a different place on each mini in a row. It allowed for batch painting whilst making identical minis look different(ish)

Glad to be back (again again). Batch painting is the bane of my life. I'd rather paint a horde 1 model at a time. Alas that sometimes batching is the best way.

zahnib wrote:I think the Mines of Moria boxset was the turning point for me. I don't know what changed but those models were rough! The later sets looked like they got back on track though.

Yeah, not sure what happened with the MoM set. Definitely not a high point in the plastic kits. Certainly not on par with what they were capable of at the time.

Viterbi wrote:Great looking horde, but the Hoplite bust looks very cool, especially the gold.

Thanks Vit. I'm pretty happy with it.

Olthannon wrote:Beautiful looking lotr minis, the rohirrim cloaks in particular are great. You have an excellent painting style.

The style then works really well on that hoplite, that beaten bronze armour has such lustre. He's clearly been at it with the spit polish!

Thank you Olthannon for the kind words. The hoplite really lent itself to that style, seeing as the model itself is cast to have that beaten appearance in the first place.



Right so quite a long absence from me. 2021 was a very slow year for me with a grand total of less then 30 minis painted. General apathy towards just about everything (thanks prolonged effects of a pandemic) and later on having a new-born (thanks prolonged effects of sex) really put a crimp in anything hobby related. As it stands I've not touched a brush in the better part of three months now much to my displeasure. I had planned on painting an easy 10 models a month just to keep my skills from degrading too much.
Given that it is the last day of January already I thought I better paint something. So I smashed out a few more orcs using only a limited colour palette of mostly browns, greys and slivers.








As always thanks for looking and thanks for sticking with my after all this time!
C&C is always welcome.

Welcome back! Yup, last year was not the best for painting. Or doing anything else. That scheme suits the orcs perfectly.

WB. Nice work on the orcs. Get what time you can with the brush.

Yeah the year has certainly tried to suck our collective asses.

Nice to see your update, I've been thinking of getting into Middle Earth Battle Companies for something me and my wife could play.

That scheme looks awesome on your orcs, what did you use for that green skin?

Quick orcs look great and hope you find some time and motivation this year to tackle some more! I can say from experience, kids get older and some more free time returns Although it's more of a long-term thing

Congrats on the new arrival, they’re a bundle of joy but it’s hard work! Having down time is important, and I personally find mini painting quite mindful. Your work on the Orks is great, I always love a quick and effective paint job!

Nice Orcs!

Hello all. Time for my quarterly update.

Thanks again all for the kind words. Very much appreciated!


@Olthannon The green orc skin is a couple of coats of Deathguard Green followed by a flesh wash with DGG highlights. I've got a couple of flesh shades I cycle through, that was likely Reikland fleshshade but it could have guilliman flesh. Actually just looking at the pics again, it may be agrax earthshade in this instance, as that's what i've coated the rest of the cloth/leather & armour in. So I probably just slapped a bit on the skin too to save myself time.



Finished a unit of Wild Men of Drúadan this time around. They took me waaay too long to complete though. Working on them on and off for about a month. Nice models on their own, but with only 3 sculpts across 12 models they got pretty samey very quickly, so I converted a few. And then I felt inspired so I turned a Mordor Troll drum into a forest drum.
My painting on these isn't the best and is a bit rough in some places. I also haven't used any metallics on them which honestly was kind of strange.

Ghân-buri-Ghân


Warriors


Drummer w/Drum


Family shot



In total took me roughly ~17-18 hours to complete. Too long in my opinion, but they're done now and I don't plan ever painting another batch. So we'll call it a win and leave it at that.

Looking good and nice to bring some individuality into the sculpts, that's not easy with such a small size of model options. The drummer looks really cool with his great drum besides him.

They may have taken a while, but they look good snrub! I can’t imagine painting without metallics either, it certainly suits the Stone Age look they have

Here we are again, a new year and a new re-start to this blog. This makes like 6 I think...

I've recently moved house and I've got a whole new hobby space all to myself. I had one at my last house, but that got largely taken over by a certain small human. This one though, is all mine.
It's not set up yet, being somewhat low in comparison to everything else on the list of priorities, but i've got room for 3 display cases and have at my disposal 4.8m worth of desk space (that's 16" in the old measurements), so I think i'll be able to split it into distinct painting/building/computer areas. It's got a south-facing window too, so I should get reasonable light throughout the day.

My goals for this year are fairly simple.
-I want to paint at least 10 miniatures a month.
-I want to get to the local club at least once a month for a game.

My main focus this year will be 30k as i've completely lost all interest whatsoever in 40k. Heresy provides a ruleset that I like and (so far) doesn't change every month. I've got a 1st Legion force of roughly ~2.5k on the go already, just have to paint them up now.
MESBG will remain ever present on my hobby agenda. I will not be sated until I have collected and painted every miniature ever produced for the game.

I found a wargaming club near me some time ago, but never had a chance to check it out until September. They have a number of Heresy players already and a few more who've recently shown interest in the game, so that should provide regular opponents.
I've managed to get in a couple of low points learning games already and am enjoying it quite a lot. It probably shouldn't have taken us 4 hours to play a 1k match, but we had to refer to the BRB quite a lot and we kept getting distracted just talking about stuff.
I'll go more in-depth into my Heresy ventures in a future post though.
The club also has a bevy of MESBG players too, so hopefully I'll get some matches of that game in too at some point.
Best part is, the club meets on a night I don't work, so bonus!


Bit of a photo dump coming now. Just the stuff I've been working on since I last posted back in April.

Middle-earth stuff.
Gondor up first. Super quick these guys. Basecoat silver, wash black, drybrush on some silver highlights. Like a bit over an hours work all told for 20 dudes.


Faramir and Denethor got a bit more work on them. I tried to make the Denethor look a bit haggard and care-worn. Grey stubble and dark eyes. Faramir was a surprisingly rough sculpt with very little detail around the face. Not at all the quality of most of the other ME metals of that era.


And a before shot. The bases I wanted to represent a town in disrepair. Maybe Osgiliath, maybe some other small settlement being fought over. Realised afterwards I didn't put much in the way of rubble on them, but I'm ok with them as they are.


Rohan. Pretty much the last of my Rohirrim. I've got a few riders who are in need of repairs before I can get around to them, but this is the bulk of them and more then enough for most games.


The horses are almost done too. Just the saddle and tack to paint plus the body markings. I've kept the Rohan horses to mostly browns and reds, with a few blacks thrown for good measure. There's a hand full of grey and white horses that need to be airbrushed too as feth trying to paint that much white smoothly.


Mordor now, 3 more Orcs. I think this takes me too just shy of 30 mordor orcs now. Bit more colourful with their red cloth, but as with the rest of my mordor orcs, only a limited palette of about a half dozen colours used.


Mouth of Sauron's horse. Went for rusted barding to give some life to what would otherwise be quite a drab model. Just have to paint the Mouth himself now, both foot and mounted.



Non-MESBG stuff.
Painted this Morrigan mini from Brother Vinni. Quite a detailed sculpt and very game accurate.

I don't know if it made any difference to the final look of the model, but I tried a technique I was told about where you paint skin blue beforehand and it's supposed to give it more natural depth. I dunno if it worked or not, but here's a blue Morrigan.


Fallen Angel. This guy originally started out as a test piece for my 30k Dark Angel scheme, but ended up not what I wanted, so he got adjusted and turned into a Fallen.
You can open the spoiler to read the background I've given him to tie him in to my wider narrative. I wouldn't though. Like all fan-fic, it's pretty cringey.




Anyhoo, if you slogged through all that, thanks! Always keen to hear your thoughts on my work.
Cheers!

Lotr stuff looks brill mate, particularly the mouth of Sauron horse, the armour is cracking.

Never fear about background seeming cringey, I always worry about that myself but at the end of the day, it's still cool to have some narrative for your figures. That's the best bit of Warhammer to me.

Good to see you back snrub! The new hobby space sounds epic, plenty of shelves to fill with 3 display cabinets. The Gondorians, are particularly cool, I can’t believe you did them all in an hour! The horses of Rohan are really nice colours too.

Yes folks it's that time again. Time for my bi-annual blog post.

Since my last post back in the long lost days of January (Christ where'd that year go?) I've managed to do not too badly.
My aim was I wanted to paint 10 minis a month, and so far i've managed to paint 77, plus I finished off the Hoplite bust I started like 2 years ago.
I also wanted to get at least 1 game in a month and in this i've far exceeded my expectations. Since the start of the year I think i've cracked out about 15 games of 30k, plus 1 of Fantasy and even made it to my first gaming event, which largely contributed to the amount of minis painted.


The painted portion of my Heresy army, the first 1250 points.

Consul Paladin Amadeus Zorn, Force Commander of the Vanguard of the 37th Host. Blademaster of the Host of Blades and Seneschal of the Order of the Flashing Dagger


Apothecarion Detachment


Tactical Squads



Despoiler Squad


Tactical Support Squad


Can't honestly say i'm super happy with the results. I'm following the Cult of Paint recipe for Dark Angels, which I really like, but my airbrush is not precise enough for the intended effect. I'll probably strip them at some point and try again now that I have an idea of what I'm doing.


Next on my list for the 1st are a Cataphractii Praetor w/Terranic Greatsword, 10 Terminators with a mix of Lightning Claws and Power/Chain Fists and 2 Contemptor Dreadnoughts.




Thanks for dropping in (again) and I'll see you all in a few [time period to be determined].

You’ve done well putting an army together! The green bits on the terminators look cool, I’m assuming they’re a 3d print? Hoepfully we get to see them painted up before too long!

Nice to see you back Snrub. I’ve also had a bit of a break, so nice to know I’m not the only one. Although, having said that, it’s getting dangerously close to two years since the last update to my P&M blog

Excited to see more of your Horus Heresy progress

That's a big batch of Marines! Looking good.

Nice one Snrub, love those Dark Angels.

gobert wrote:You’ve done well putting an army together! The green bits on the terminators look cool, I’m assuming they’re a 3d print? Hoepfully we get to see them painted up before too long!

Thanks Gobert. Yes they are 3d prints. Combi-meltas on the termies and a chainfist for the contemptor. And a helmet + arm replacement for the praetor. Termies are next on my Heresy painting queue, so shouldn't be too long.

zahnib wrote:Nice to see you back Snrub. I’ve also had a bit of a break, so nice to know I’m not the only one. Although, having said that, it’s getting dangerously close to two years since the last update to my P&M blog

Excited to see more of your Horus Heresy progress

Thanks Zahnib. Can't let it hit the 2 year mark. Gotta get it in there and give it a token post before it rolls over. I'll keep an eye out for an update though!

youwashock wrote:That's a big batch of Marines! Looking good.

Cheers YWS. Still need at least double that many for a 3k foot slogging army.

Olthannon wrote:Nice one Snrub, love those Dark Angels.

Thanksm, Olth. Even on review, I can't say I'm still overly enamoured with the final look of it. Airbrush/airbrushing skill just isn't up to scratch. That being said, I won't be stripping to them for repainting until I've caught up on everything else... That way lies madness.



Right, a final cheeky update before the end of the year.
Initially, I was hoping to get 1 game in and 10 minis painted a month. I'm well ahead on the game front. Up to 20 or 21 I think. But I'm currently sitting on 82 painted minis, well below the desired 120. However I've got a host of almost finished Riders of Rohan (15 to be exact) that just require finishing touches on the horses. And 3 of my Heresy apothecaries that are almost done.
If I can finish all of them by midnight tomorrow, that'll take me to 100 painting minis and I'll be content.
I like my chances.

New year new army post.



So my efforts to do a final blitz on the Rohirrim horses ended in failure. I managed to get 6 of them finished before I went "ah feth it" and put Fellowship of the Ring on. Oh well, 88 models finished for the year isn't bad.


This year I'm approaching things a bit differently. Rather then just painting things willynilly with only a vague idea of what exactly I'm going to do, I've mapped exactly what I want to paint.
-I've got a bunch of minis from Anvil Industries, from their short lived Afterlife game, which I backed on Kickstarter in 2014... I figure they're now more then halfway to drinking age, I should probably paint them.
-There's a group of terminators and dreadnoughts looking at me askance from my display shelves. I want them done before I buy any more Heresy stuff. (Goodluck with that happening.)
-Lastly I'm building and painting a 1500pt Necron force for a 3rd Edition 40k tourny happening in June that I'm hoping get to. I wanted to use something new that I have no experience with and Necrons seems a good choice.

Those 3 projects give me plenty to bounce between and combined well hit my goal of 120 minis. I'll probably break it up with some other stuff too, but these will be the main focus. Bit will hopefully be able to stick to them pretty well. Hopefully.


To kick things off, here's my pile of unbuilt Necrons. There's 1300pts right there. I'm just missing 10 more warriors.


Even if I can't get a ticket to this event, I'm still going to build the army for fun.

Managed to grab a ticket to this event, so the building begins unabated.
1st Day sees me complete 23 warriors, 6 scarabs and a Royal Warden who'll probably get pressganged into an Immortal squad.




Quite possibly one of the most annoying unit's I've ever built. The arms are not at all friendly and everything is super spindly and I bent about 6 sets of legs trying to attach them to bases. I'm clearly too used to nice bulky impossible to break space marines.
And the fact that the heads only fit certain models pissed me off to no end, but I managed in the end.

The event (it's not really a competitive tourny as such by the sounds of it) is based around the global Eye of Terror campaign run early in the 2000s. There will be 5 games spread across 2 days and escalate in points, 750pts, 1000pts and 1500pts the first 3 games. The last two games are also 1500pts, but with the option to bump it up to 2000pts if both players want.
Thanks to the Imperium Partworks by Hachette, I've got almost everything I need for a 2k army. Only thing is another 10 warriors and a 2nd Tomb Spyder. The Vehicle Design Rules are in effect so I'll hopefully be running a VDR version of the Triarch Stalker pending EO approval. If not, I might have to splash out on another Heavy Destroyer.

We'll see how we go.

snrub wrote:

zahnib wrote:Nice to see you back Snrub. I’ve also had a bit of a break, so nice to know I’m not the only one. Although, having said that, it’s getting dangerously close to two years since the last update to my P&M blog
Excited to see more of your Horus Heresy progress

Thanks Zahnib. Can't let it hit the 2 year mark. Gotta get it in there and give it a token post before it rolls over. I'll keep an eye out for an update though!

Hahah, perhaps you're right. We'll see what I can muster.

Your plans for 2024 sound like a great structure to base your hobbying around. Especially exciting to see your Necron progress and here about your experience with the mentioned Warhammer 40,000 3rd edition event. I have very fond memories of reading White Dwarfs during the Eye of Terror campaign era. I have a (very) small collection of 13th Company Space Wolves which I hope to one day get round to painting. Look forward to seeing your next update! And happy new year

What's this?! 3 post in under a week? Outrageous behaviour.

Another load of Necrons done. 10 Immortals, a Heavy Destroyer and a Spyder.

The Spyder was fun to put together. I've tried to angle everything so it looks like he's hunched over something demolecularising it. (terrible non-word...)
Won't know whether it's worked or not till I glue it together and attach it to a base.
The Immortals where a nice unit to assemble. Everything the warriors were not. Got some gap filling to do on the shoulders though. Big gaps.

 zahnib wrote:
Hahah, perhaps you're right. We'll see what I can muster.

Two years today, mate. Final chance!