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Kudos for hitting the front page again! (it's the last picture on there as I'm writing this). Didn't you mention something about getting on the home page a few updates back? Coincidence?

Completely agree with your point on the bike's age. That seam down the middle is really noticable on most models, unless you dedicate some time to smoothing it out (something I didn't do with the Scars).

I've been lurking a lot recently, but I have to say your hobbying is really doing well. You've hit a solid pace, and your cranking out some really good stuff in solid time (remember when you had 1 model a week as a target?).

I had something (I think it was the Zoat again) on the gallery front page. This is the normal home page. And the pic in the articles section. All I need now is to be featured on the Facebook feed, and I think I’ll have checked every box on the Dakka featured bingo card.

I’ll agree that my Hobby life is doing well. At least something is going right! Getting a consistently higher level of quality out, and at a higher pace. Part of the pace might just be more hours dedicated to the workbench. Although in the last few weeks I’ve been binge watching Arrow/Flash on Netflix, which killed a lot of hours. Finished seasons 3/1 or them respectively this weekend, which is why I didn’t get as much paint down.

Well S5 of Arrow is out now, you can save yourself a bunch of hours and skip straight to it. I honestly didn't even finish S4 of Arrow. I missed the last couple of episodes of S4. Make up your own opinion, of course!
I am however a big fan of The Flash. S3 is going now, and I'm loving it. I'm not up to date yet, they did a big crossover (Flash, Arrow, legends, supergirl) that 'continues on Arrow'. So I'm going to catch up on Arrow instead of skipping to it.
Do you watch Legends of Tomorrow? I watched 10-12 episodes or something and really didn't rate it at all.

 Zambro wrote:
Well S5 of Arrow is out now, you can save yourself a bunch of hours and skip straight to it. I honestly didn't even finish S4 of Arrow. I missed the last couple of episodes of S4. Make up your own opinion, of course!
I am however a big fan of The Flash. S3 is going now, and I'm loving it. I'm not up to date yet, they did a big crossover (Flash, Arrow, legends, supergirl) that 'continues on Arrow'. So I'm going to catch up on Arrow instead of skipping to it.
Do you watch Legends of Tomorrow? I watched 10-12 episodes or something and really didn't rate it at all.

My understanding is that Legends starts after the episode 8 crossover of flash/arrow, of the season I’m on. I think I just watched 3 of flash, so still a bit out. Will watch it then. Supergirl I think starts after the current seasons I’m on, so will pick that up afterwards.

I spent most of the day baking. Not doing my full cookie spread, but 2 batches of 3 kinds. Phoning in the holidays this year.

On the painting front, did a little more detail work on the biker. Washed the gold, few other things. Plugging along.

Spent some productive time at the bench last night.


In hindsight, I think I should have angled the head a little different. Probably made more sense before he started jinking. He might be the only bike in my collection that’s not just driving straight ahead, but I like him that way. Makes sense with the axe.

So that’s the last Techmarine I needed for their 4-square. Well, 3 for them, as they have less options then most HQs.


Which brings us to this:


The full HQ matrix. Not necessarily all the wargear options, but the ways they can take the the field. Foot, TDA, Bike, Jump. With the techs doing their own thing for the most part.

This will probably wrap up my year for painting. I may try to get some of the extra options done, or just build for a bit. In theory I’m heading down to Kentucky for a week next Tuesday, but that’s still up in the air. I’ll probably start up my year in review work soon, so expect more rambling in the near future.

--Nev

Looks great, made me think of an awesome advent calendar for some reason. Enjoy the festive break.

 RandyMcStab wrote:
Looks great, made me think of an awesome advent calendar for some reason. Enjoy the festive break.

That could be a lot of fun, if a tad expensive. Mini-a-day for 25 days? Clip the parts for each guy, and put them in a box/bag. Each day you get to assemble one. You could probably break larger kits down into parts. "Today I got the right track assembly of a rhino” Might be able to stretch a start collecting box out like that. Or one of the larger battleforces more easily.

Of course, it would require a someone to put all the time/money into assembling it. Which would take a non-insignificant amount of both.

Even just the pics, open the door to new servant of the EMPRAH each day!

 RandyMcStab wrote:
Even just the pics, open the door to new servant of the EMPRAH each day!

That’s a lot easier to do!

I like the swinging axe, and the angled bike's dynamic pose.

Bike turned out really nicely. Good addition to your force for sure.

Great work Nev on both the bike and HQs. They all look great. I also watched the batrep video, it was a pleasure to watch your forces at work.

Wow, that is a very satisfying picture to look at!

ColonelFazackerley wrote:I like the swinging axe, and the angled bike's dynamic pose.

Gitsplitta wrote:Bike turned out really nicely. Good addition to your force for sure.

I do quite like the way he turned out. Kinda makes me want to re-do the rest of my bikers. But only in a not-going-to-happen, totally hypothetical sense.

Inevitable_Faith wrote:Great work Nev on both the bike and HQs. They all look great. I also watched the batrep video, it was a pleasure to watch your forces at work.

Glad you liked it. I might watch it someday, but an hour of listening to myself is pure torture. Hopefully I didn’t embarrass myself too badly.

Zambro wrote:Wow, that is a very satisfying picture to look at!

Speaking of which...

I never got a formal table shot of 2013, which was partially covered by this blog. I did compile a list of what I worked on though, so pulled it from the shelf this evening.

2014:

2015:

And 2016:


Now not everything I’ve done is pictured. A few minis got lost in the gap between my year end summaries and the start of the new year. The Stormraven, a few Vanguard Vets, and I think a biker or two. The coins scattered around represent minis sent off to other homes, and not present for the annual pic.

I’ll get to my yearly resolutions later, but I want to revisit the goals in the 1st post. Well, technically they first showed up a few down, but were copied into the main post years ago. I’m pretty much done.

Restart my Eldar.
--Learn how to strip paint, clean up old stuff. -done-
--Buy new rules, add units to make a viable army. -done-
--Construct a webway portal, either purely scenic, or as a skyshield landing pad. -done-
--Base army with a grass/maiden world scheme. -done-

All this. No fuzzy math or evasive answers. I was able to put a viable 1,850 list on the table, fully painted, fully based. Could it be better? Could I use a few more things? Of course! But this is 40k, and army is never done.

Flesh out my Ultramarines.
--Add bike captain, and enough bikes to fill 2 troop picks. Done!
--Add more sternguard, with weapon options I currently lack (HFs, more combis). Done! (still have some bolters waiting for paint, but options are fleshed out comfortably)
--Expand HQ options (counts-as Lysander, MotF w/bike/cbeamer/foot). -done-
--Fill out army with new toys.
--Construct polar fortress display board.
--Base army in an arctic scheme. Done!

Less total then the Eldar, but still a major victory. Never did the display board, and at this point the odds of me doing it are very low. I have a feeling that space is going to get very tight in the near future. I’m hoping I have space to keep everything on shelves, not packed in boxes. But big terrain pieces? Probably not. I don’t have all the combis for the SG, but enough to pack to pop a tank, and some HFs for general use. Never have enough toys, but I have added quite a few.

Get some new cases, foam
--Figure out what I need, verify, place order. -done-

Might need to get more, but a bag and 7 KRU worth of foam.

Get better at photography
--Build a light box.
--Learn to use more features on my camera.
--Photograph and upload pics of my collection.

I could probably stand to learn my camera a bit better, but I think I’ve got the other two goals here well sorted.

Write some tactica articles (not really P&M, but on my to-do list)
--I find I'm repeating myself a lot in advice posts, would be good to organize my thoughts and just point people to them.

OK, never happened. I generally stear clear of the rules arguments these days. While it does occasionally get irritating to repeat myself, it’s mostly to new members, who deserve a personalized response.

OK, that’s enough rambling for now. Have a nice weekend all!

That's a lot of HQ's. And to think, I thought my 2 Chaplains and 4 Captains was a lot

 War Kitten wrote:
That's a lot of HQ's. And to think, I thought my 2 Chaplains and 4 Captains was a lot

And that's just one of each. I've got a lot of duplicates. You know you have a problem when your captain count passes 10.

I have a problem...

Good lord, are you ambitious!
That's a mighty large bit of accomplished work there Nevelon, more than i've got! The yearly resolutions seem to be fairly useful for keeping your hobbying on track. Might do that myself, it's clever!

Great work over the years Nev. It's always good to take a step back and look at all the work you've done. I find it helps motivate me to look forward when I see where I've come from. As for the video your opponent did like 95% of the talking so you won't be hearing yourself all that much. And for the record, I don't know a single person who likes the sound of their recorded voice, we all sound different to ourselves than we do to others.

Impresive work nevelon, like the idea of the yearly resolution, might have to steal that idea myself so I actually finish something.

 Nevelon wrote:

 War Kitten wrote:
That's a lot of HQ's. And to think, I thought my 2 Chaplains and 4 Captains was a lot

And that's just one of each. I've got a lot of duplicates. You know you have a problem when your captain count passes 10.

I have a problem...

It won't be a problem if you simply collect the entire UM Chapter, then you have a captain for each company, with a spare or two

That's some really good work, Nev. I especially like the schemes for the aspect warriors, (loathe as I may be to praise xenos over loyal sons of uUtramar) and the captain with the gold shoulder pads.

I almost want to pull all the minis from my yearly blog summaries and compare them to all my previous body of work. From a 40k perspective, I might have done more work in the last few years then everything previous to that. Blogs: they motivate! If I count all my WHFB stuff, I’d not be close though. Fantasy hit at a time where I had a decent job and a lot of free time. Chaos and Undead shelves are a tad on the full side.

So I have too many captains. There is one more primed RT era guy in the to-do pile. But I thought it might be time for them to come out for a group picture again:

Calgar snuck in there, so I guess this isn’t just captains, but marine commanders.

And while I don’t have tons extra of the other HQs, I do have some.

Crummy pic, and doesn’t count the captain and chaplain of my company, who live on the shelf above.

Speaking of which, one of my goals this morning while drinking my coffee was to re-shelf the YTD stuff. While I might have been able to re-jugger stuff to fit on four shelves, I just took the 5th one.


A year ago, I counted up 9,389 points of Ultramarines. My Battlesribe YTD roster puts me at 1,826 for the year. For a total of 11,215 points of the Emperor’s finest. Fully painted, fully based.

On a related note, I painted up 794 worth of Eldar this year. If my roster is to be believed, this puts my at 2,819 total painted and fieldable in a modern codex.

So my total points in paint for the year is 2,620. Plus a few odds and ends, like a ork boy, chaos marauder, Chamady, and a zoat. Last year’s total was 2,224, and also included some odds and ends. 69 minis total, with my 1/2/4 math, 87 model equivalents. That’s counting the webway portal as a vehicle.

It’s a good thing I started my year end stuff early this year. I’ve still got a bit more rambling to do, but I think I’m done for now.

Hope everyone is enjoying their weekends.

--Nev


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 brushcommando wrote:
That's some really good work, Nev. I especially like the schemes for the aspect warriors, (loathe as I may be to praise xenos over loyal sons of uUtramar) and the captain with the gold shoulder pads.

You posted while I was working on that wall of text, so I didn’t get a chance to respond.

I had a lot of fun with the aspect warriors. It’s nice to get a chance to paint something besides a sea of blue. And while my ultras are not exactly “subdued” in tone, the aspects are significantly brighter. Mixing things up on the workbench helps to prevent burnout, not just in models, but paint schemes.

The guy with the gold pads and thunderhammer is not actually a captain (although he could fill that role in a pinch) but is my new champion for the Honor Guard. I also quite like the way he turned out.

One thing I like about painting stuff for 30k, is I get to use a lot more gold. The two BaC tac squads, the CTDA guys, etc. Blue and gold just go well together. Only a few HQs and the honor guard get that treatment on the 40k side.

Marines look ready to purge some xenos!

I think your unit could fit some more shelves in...

shasolenzabi wrote:Marines look ready to purge some xenos!

Good thing my Eldar are on another shelf...

ColonelFazackerley wrote:I think your unit could fit some more shelves in...

I probably could fit another shelf in there. One problem with that is that it could make it rough to get to the guys in the back.

For fun, I took out a measuring tape and got some numbers. Each of those shelves is 7.5” x 34.5”. So about 1.8 square feet. So if I run with my assumption that I could have fit everyone on 4 shelves, that’s around 7.2 square feet worth of marines. The total area of all 5 shelves would be 9 square feet.

Not to count my chickens before they hatch, but I’ve got good odds of getting the china cabinet in the divorce. It’s got 3 levels, and two halves. Each of the 6 sections is roughly 13.5” x 22.5”. That’s for the glass shelves (4 of them) and there is some room on the wood, and the bottom. We can break it up in 6x2.1 square foot zones. Now I’m actually going to need some of that for my stemware, but I figure either 2/3rds or half can be taken over for minis. Half would be 6.3 square feet, so a bit less then what I have now (although less narrow) but 2/3rds would be 8.4 square feet.

Time will tell how much space I end up with overall. Spent part of the morning putting together banker’s boxes and loading up shelves of gaming books. And when I took the Eldar off the YTD shelf, I just packed them up in their KR foam.

That's quite the collection Nev. Good job in being able to keep to one project for so long. I have like 4 armies between 500 to 1850 points and some that aren't even out of the box to be built yet. One day I'll have a single unified force as large as your SM force. Your dedication to the Emperor is commendable sir.

You must have well over a company now how long until you've got the entire chapter represented?

I'll echo the good job on sticking with the painting I must admit that's the bit that I struggle with most. I've got legions of white primered dudes, and maybe only 30% are painted...

Inevitable_Faith wrote:That's quite the collection Nev. Good job in being able to keep to one project for so long. I have like 4 armies between 500 to 1850 points and some that aren't even out of the box to be built yet. One day I'll have a single unified force as large as your SM force. Your dedication to the Emperor is commendable sir.

Ynneadwraith wrote:You must have well over a company now how long until you've got the entire chapter represented?
I'll echo the good job on sticking with the painting I must admit that's the bit that I struggle with most. I've got legions of white primered dudes, and maybe only 30% are painted...

I generally blame my age and packrat nature for the size of my collection. Slowly add to it over 25ish years, and it’s surprising what you end up with! I’ve got a whole battle company on the top shelf. If I re-jiggerd the swap shelf around, with the BaC stuff I’m probably close to the second. Once I get the Burning of Prospero stuff built and painted that will also help a lot with the numbers. Although I still intend on gearing them up for 30k. Still need to source parts. I think I’ve got about 1/3rd of the 10th company, and half the 1st. I think my rough marine count is about 275 total. Between stuff to build and in the prime pile, probably another 50-75 guys. So I’m about at a quarter to a third of the chapter. If we assume I paint 50 marines a year, that should be a full chapter in 12-15 years. And me a loony bin.

As for the dedication to paint, I find my rule of only playing painted minis, and this blog help the most. If I want to use it, it needs paint. And the support of you all helps keep me honest with myself and pacing/progress.

So I went down to the FLGS to grab a gift for my nephews (7 and 9) Picked up King of New York. I know they like King of Tokyo, and this is a small step up from that. But while I was there, the guy at the counter let me know there was a 35% off sale on GW. The only question after that was what I was picking up, and how many things. The sensible side of me put a hard cap on one box. They had a very good stock, so it took a while to make up my mind. Ended up with a Stormhawk. Probably spend most of it’s time as a counts-as talon (going to try to magnetize options so it fits the role well) just for formations. It will also be pushing me to get some new foam. The guys are going to see if they can get KR though their distributer (they have been able to in the past, a couple years ago) so if I can get it without shipping, and at a discount, that will make pulling the trigger on a kaiser 2 real easy.

and for my year end records:

On sale, ~$36
(my back of the envelope math has me succeeding on my paint more then I buy goal, will do the formal number crunch later)

The commanders are looking good and you did a ton of painting this year.

Hopefully you get the china cabinet and I look forward to the Stormhawk.

It's what I wish the Stormtalon was from the start.

I second that. Looking forward to what you do with that stormhawk.