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I never would have thought of using canvas for bases, thanks for sharing your own trials with this idea. I'm liking your pond.

Cheers! Yeah, it is a surprisingly easy method and pretty cheap. I am definitely thinking about using this for other purposes, like maybe cave areas or something? It also means I can swap out the vegetation in my forests for traditional Northern European forests or something more tropical.

So on the home stretch with these now. Washes dried, and I put the clear acryllic on the pond for a water effect. I tried the technique from the video of using a plastic bag to make ripples. I think I overdid it, but the technique will look good on a river, which is flowing water. I think the pond came out okay, a bit too bright blue I suppose. But I have seen lakes like this in Germany!




The forest bases could be used as they are, but I wanted to try adding some leaf litter to them.


So I diluted some PVA and painted it over the bare earth. I have some green tea, and I have sprinkled that over it. I dunno if it is a bit too subtle to be noticeable, but we shall see when it dries! Ready for use in a game of Age of Fantasy tomorrow, my first wargame in like...4 years?




This project was pretty cool. I am a big fan of the acryllic as a texturing agent because it is flexible, can be coloured straight through, and it is really cheap. I will be doing two more hills with my remaining acryllic and also 6 river "straight" sections and at least 2 "bends".

The colors of that pond are amazing. Well done, the effect of the green around the edges really makes the reflection of overhead trees pop.

Thanks! I am a bit ambivalent about it, because it is so strikingly blue. I think the effect will work better for the rivers I am planning because there will be less surface area.

The pond looks good to me. I like the blue, especially the indigo in the middle-- that's one deep pond.

Thanks Josh!
I finished the forest mats. The effect of the "leaf litter" is subtle but I think it looks good anyhow. Here it is with some trees on it!


And here is a battlefield with a selection of my terrain on it, for a game my wife has nicely agreed with me. We will be playing Dwarves vs. Goblins in Age of Fantasy, the One Page Rules version of Age of Sigmar.




Age of Fantasy was a lot of fun. Very quick to play and easy to teach. My wife hammered me both times, mostly due to me not clicking into the alternating activation idea and making some moves in a stupid order so that she was able to clean out my heavy hitting units with missile fire. But we had some dramatic moments with my double sized unit of Goblin Archers who held out heroically in both games and killed far more than their worth in stunties! The goblins will rise again!

My goblins started by moving forward to skulk behind the hut, and the spiders scurried forward to lurk behind the forests, ready to spring out on Turn 2.


Unimpressed, the dwarves let rip with their organ gun and pasted the goblin boss as he reached the base of the watchtower. Oops. The other Goblins decided to hide behind the comfortingly solid hut.




The Marksmen were less successful in gunning down the spiders, and promptly got eaten next turn.


Unfortunately, the Organ Gun put paid to the spiders soon after (should have moved aggressively forward with my spearmen to try and bait it into shooting early!). The Spearmen managed to kill the Dwarven Leader before getting obliterated by the organ gun, but the heroic and plucky Goblin Archers scaled the tower and began to rain death on the advancing stunties!




The dwarves clambered up the tower and an epic battle ensued, with the Archers slowly fighting off the warriors, only to be gunned down by the Organ Gun when there was only one left!

The second game we changed the organ gun out for some miners and the spider riders out for some squig hoppers. The marksmen proved highly effective, killing enough Hoppers turn one to cause them to Waver, and then finishing them off the next turn. My Spearmen did a little better, but a combination of the Dwarf Lord and the Warriors finished them off. My Lord got mugged by the miners, and then tried to take out the Dwarf Lord the next turn but got cut down. Then my Archers led the enemy on a merry chase, shooting miners down until they all died, before being caught at bay by the advancing dwarf warriors and cut down to a Goblin.






It was great to put my terrain to work and all the pieces were fun to use and provided tactical options. I would like to add a set of ruined buildings with intact floors for more line of sight blocking and more vertical movement, but this is a grand set for getting some games in. Best news is my wife enjoyed herself (no doubt laying the beat down on some poor oppressed goblins helped with that) and would like to try a seige using my ringfort next weekend. I will try and light the battlefield a little better for that one and also take some pictures! It is so satisfying to get a game in after so many years without, and I can recommend the Age of Fantasy ruleset for people introducing wargamers to non-wargamers. My wife hates fussy rules and having to learn lots of detail in games she plays, and she found Age of Fantasy fun enough to want to play it again, so that is pretty good!

Your terrain came out wonderfully well and the game shots are aces- thanks for sharing! To have a wife that also enjoys the hobby, whether modeling or gaming or both, is truly a pearl beyond price- you're very lucky (and a good salesman, to make the game appealing)!

Thanks! Yeah my wife was very skeptical but luckily the simple system of Age of Fantasy meant she was quickly able to get into the fun of it.

I am pleased with the terrain, especially when I see it all laid out. Working on two start collecting boxes right now, then gonna have a go at the rivers!

The leaf litter I think works great on the terrain. I’ll have to read the battle report shortly as I’m headed into that stupid work thing currently.

The terrain is looking great all laid out.

Brilliant work. Nice catching up. Interesting read.

Thank You for a battle report, Da Boss. Very entertaining and pretty scenics add a great deal to the atmosphere!

Phew. Thanks for the kind words. As per fething usual, the start of 2020 has been a joke with regard to workload and so on. Ended up working 70 hour weeks for weeks on end, and was way too knackered to keep up with blogging.
Been working on a lot of Chaos stuff, like a Nurgle Start Collecting that I need to finish off, and my Beasts of Chaos Start Collecting. I had a Beastman army in 6th and 7th edition Warhammer, but sold it when I moved country back in the day and I have regretted it for years, so getting these guys painted up has been really nice for me. I love Beastmen. Planning to add Frostgrave Gnolls to this as well, and convert some Centigor from Marauder Horsemen, and a metal Reaper Demagorgon for a Jabberslythe stand in. I think the idea of a "mixed" beastmen army with Gnolls as well as the "traditional" goat headed dudes is a lot cooler and a lot more thematically appropriate than just a bunch of similar beastmen. I have these guys written into the setting I run dungeons and dragons in, so I get to use my beastmen and have a unifying reason for there to be so many "beast races" in my world. Dungeons and Dragons has cat people, lizard people, hyena people, bull men, horse people, goat men, turtle men, frog and toad men, snake men and bird men...I think it makes sense if they are all created from some event, and the Warhammer World chaos gate breaking is a good starting point for that.
Anyway, here is a group shot


Bestigors were hard to paint! Lots of detail on the models. Went for the classic red armour because it fits with the rest of the warband.


Ungor with Bows, not a thing last time I played Beastmen but a good addition.


Gors, the classic. Painted these ages ago, but finally got them based properly.


Cygor, with an excessive amount of skull based fashion accessories.


Next up is the shaman and demagorgon, and then finally, after a long time on the shelf, my Gnolls.

Nice! I like the paint jobs, and glad you managed to keep rolling against job stress. I also like the future plans of having an actual chaotic mix of beastmen instead of just goats as far as the eye can see.

Very nice progress Da Boss. I also just took a quick look at your Dungeon Saga stuff from page 1 again, it was fun.

Nice work on the beastmen. The gors/ungors was one of the best GW kits, and you've really done them justice.

I still can't fully settle with these models on round bases. Mine are still square, even though they haven't seen the light of day in a long time. It will soon be a year without a game of KoW for me. But hopefully something will change one day. Your paintjob is good, although quite a few people would say "that's the reason we gett called brown orks!"

Congratulations on a very solid start and good luck going forward!

Vejut: Thanks! Dakka is a great source of inspiration and helps keep me engaged. Cannot wait to get cracking on the Gnolls en mass, just working on my test scheme now on one of them.
Syro: Hah, cheers. Struggling through the pages of crappy photography deserves some sort of medal. I really need to get a proper set up, the light in my spare room is really pants.
JoshInJapan: Thanks! Ever since I read the "Fat Bloke" Tale of 4 Gamers articles when I was just starting out I thought that Beastmen were the coolest Chaos faction. The old 6th edition book in particular just oozes creativity and is one of the best ones. I know they are not originally a "warhammer" creation but they are one of the best things about the Old World in any case.
Wirecat: Heh, Brown Orks is about right, yeah. I wanted a more furry look than the sort of human skin with fur patches of the official scheme. I think it looks better, particularly at tabletop distance. My mix of grey with brown furry bits and brown with grey furry bits is somewhat lazy, but I think overall it looks better on units. On the bases, I figured since they are all 25mm to my memory it would not matter if they were on round or square, and since I use a lot of this stuff in RPGs I decided to go for round since I think it looks nicer.
I am excited to do the Gnolls and then the Centaurs, I think they will be a pretty cool addition. Then I will finally be motivated to finish off my Wood Elves as antagonists - my first elf army in over 20 years of wargaming! Damn pointy ears.

2020 was a bit rough, wasn't it? I got floored and did not really make any progress with painting for the entire year, just slowly worked my way through a Start Collecting Nurgle box.

Towards the summer I got a Great Unclean One though, and he is finally finished!


His skin has a bit more depth in person, it is very strongly green in this picture for some reason. But what a lovely model to work on! Overall I think the paint job is good, but honestly he is so big and the detail is so well defined he is very easy to work on and despite being really intimidated by him I found him a pleasure to paint. He'll be used in Age of Fantasy and Grimdark Future, but also the excellent adventure The Forbidden Caverns of Archaia (a sort of deluxe Caves of Chaos homage by the guy who did Barrowmaze) has a pestilence cult which summon a huge abomination as the final boss and he fits the bill perfectly. I am really pleased with the "Realm of Chaos" base with tentacles, organic textures and baleful eyes glaring out of it, trying to evoke some of the old artwork of the Warp and also provide a colour contrast.

I have a bit of a "second wind" at the moment for painting, we'll see if it lasts (previous performance predicts I will run out of steam sometime in March when all the usual school deadlines come due...)

Been having a rough time (like lots of us) but my wife commented that I have been way more chill and less angry since I have been painting and crafting again, so I am going to be trying to paint at least 30 minutes every day as a sort of mental hygiene. Seems to do me a lot of good. Plan is to tackle "The Shelf of Shame", which contains minis that have been sitting primed and ready to paint for years in some cases. I will post up a bestiary a bit later so you see what needs to be done! I want to clear some of this stuff away and actually start working on some Sci Fi stuff, but I feel bad starting the Sci Fi when some of those models have been waiting so long!

He's disgusting, in a good way!

Hope you keep the momentum going

Great work keep it up!

I went down from 70 hours a week to 45~ and man has my life/painting improved.

Thanks lads. I went somewhat part time but there are issues with my place of employment that means it hasn't really helped me too much. But 70 hours a week is really rough, that was my work at it's worst but it wasn't like that all the time, that would have killed me!

Got some group shots of some of the rest of the start collecting. I am a bit annoyed, I am always trying to find SOMEWHERE in this bloody apartment with decent light to take these photos and I thought this was a good place, but I am still unhappy with them. I have to shell out for a light box, I just don't have a lot of space...
Anyway!
Nurglings. I love these little buggers but they were a pain in the arse to paint. But worth it in the end!




Plaguebearers. These are actually my second squad. I think the sculpts are brilliant, probably the best of the plastic daemons. Happy with the glowing plague sword effect here.




Herald of Nurgle. A fun sculpt, I love his little Nurgling buddy.



And a group shot with the big fella.

2 squads of plaguebearers, 1 squad of nurglings, 1 squad of fly riders, a herald and a Great Unclean one is actually a fairly decent army for Grimdark Future or Age of Fantasy, but maybe someday I will add a Beast of Nurgle or two to the group. Still working on some spare Nurglings for use as Dretches or Quasits in D&D and the squad of Bloat Fly riders.

It's nice seeing your progress with the start collecting Nurgle box. I am the same way when I don't get hobby time in, I become more short tempered and easily frustrated.

I'm loving the purple bases, it really sets of the green nicely.

Good to see you back at it! Hope life stuff continues to level out for you.

I like the darker green nurgle stuff. It's a somewhat nontraditional take and I like it.

Grimdork:Thanks! My Nurgle has ended up with three different skintones due to different approaches over time, but overall it all works.
Slinky: Thanks, I think the bases are the part I am the most proud of. I am not normally someone who does a lot with bases and it is really satisfying to see these working out. I am gonna use the same style for all my Daemons to unify them for if I run Chaos Undivided.
Syro: Yup. Working on doing SOMETHING every day is really helping.

I've finished the whole lot now. Last bits were the Plague Drones and spare Nurglings.

These Nurglings are really fun, sort of a little adventuring party of Nurgling Mage, Monk, Barbarian and Fighter. Makes me want to run an all Nurgling once off game of D&D.


And these are more generic Nurglings. I've kept them all separate to use as Dretches or Quasits or whatever in D&D games.


Bloat Drones are really cool models, but I found them frustrating to work on. For one, the flying bases really don't fit together very well. I don't want to glue them because transporting them is way easier if they are separate, but the fit is really loose unfortunately. Tried my best to get them to sit properly but they kinda just don't. Colour choice for the shell and so on I am happy about, but I did a pretty poor job on the shells. The bodies and riders look good though.






Here is everything I got done last year:


And here is all of it, including a squad of Plaguebearers I painted like...9 years ago?


Really happy to have finally cleared that off my desk!

That's a nice chonk of minis

Make sure your players have to roll against an fiendish disease when they kill the wee tiny poo-demons!

Hah, when I run them in 5e I use the Nurtured One of Yurtrus statblock for the Plaguebearers, so they rush forward, get hit, die, and explode in goop that infects you with a disease.

Is that the orc one from volos? I used those once and they were sooo fun. We're in hell right now so I get to drag out all kinds of horrifying gribbly fiends and foes

The very same. They are great, because they are a different kind of threat for players used to killing swarms of mooks.

Playing in the lower planes is so much fun. My first campaign back in the day was a Planescape campaign, and I have a lot of fondness for it.

Been thinking for the last while about why I am not making as much progress as I used to, and I've come to the conclusion that my workspace is demoralising as hell. I have had certain groups of primed minis sitting on there for years at this stage, and they have gradually encroached into my workspace and made it harder to work at the desk. I really want to move on to some other projects, but on the other hand if I pack these minis away, experience says I won't work on them any time soon! So I am going to crack on and try to clear my desk of all the primed minis on it. Most of this is not an "army" aside from the remaining beastmen and wood elves, but both of those are armies I really want to finish this year. The rest is a random collection of monsters, heroes, villains and warbands for fantasy games. A mix of GW, Privateer, Wizkids and Descent minis, with the odd Mantic, Red Box Games or other manufacturer thrown in.

So here is my record to hold myself to account:
Top left, the only thing I am planning to do here is the Beholder. Unfortunately the Island of Blood is going into storage until I feel like working on rat men and high elves.
Lots of stuff to assemble underneath, gonna leave that stuff for now. The Gnolls might get done but the rest is getting put into storage.


Lots of stuff here, loads of Red Box Games Dwarves which are absolutely lovely miniatures. Not sure if I am gonna do them or if they will remain. Then there's the shambling mound and trolls and demons, they will definitely get done because they are very doable with minimal effort. The hellbrute likewise, just to get a start on my 40K stuff again. The Glade Riders are also on the list as part of the Wood Elf list. That leaves the remainder of Thorin's Company. So far I have done Thorin, Bilbo, Gandalf and Radagast. They are very detailed minis, but I think I gotta make myself do it because then Escape From Goblin Town will be done.


Lots more! The Aboleth and Sphynx are definitely on my list. Lovely models and I have wanted to get around to them for ages. The Orcs on Wargs likewise, and all the drow too. I will not be too worried about doing a stellar job on most of this, just tabletop quality.


The Tower of Shame! Loads on here, but a lot of it can be banged out fairly quickly if I focus. It really stands out to me that GW minis cost me a lot more in terms of painting because they are so detailed, whereas a lot of this is softer or lower detail stuff I can bang out quickly. Most of it is encounter groups or heroes for Dungeons and Dragons. Stuff I am most excited about is the snakemen and the Swamp Trolls, most intimidated probably the PP swamp beasts. Anything unprimed here is going into storage for now.


The Minotaurs are getting done soon, but the rest of this will be moved aside. I want to get the Stormcast done, but I will see how I feel after doing the rest of what's on the desk!


This is basically the crux of the backlog. There are a bunch of PP and GW Elves down here that I felt unable to finish painting. I find elves very challenging as my painting style is on the messy side and they really benefit from clean approaches. I am going to GET THESE DONE to get them off my desk so I can use my photography corner again and just have some desk space. Also in this mess are some Kataphracts I got for my Iron Empire army which I want to bang out and a bunch of Beastmen type minis. Definitely both top of the list after the minotaurs so my Beastmen force is finished. Looking forward to finishing my Demogorgon as well! Lastly, there is Molog's Mob. Awesome minis, looking forward to just having fun with them.


And here is what I am working on now. You can see my desk is so cluttered with gak I barely have space to put minis down on... Elementals and dungeon furniture, easy low hanging fruit to build momentum.


As for a plan of attack? Well, I want to get the Beastmen finished and then clear out the elves. After that, I will just be grabbing whatever I am the most interested in that day and slapping some paint on it. If I find myself enjoying it, I'll push myself. Otherwise, the aim is to get paint on this stuff, get it usable for games and clear the negative feelings I have about this backlog and my painting area.