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That's amazing, I think I managed... 20-30?

I've had many - too many - years like that. For the foreseeable future, I'm going to try to beat the previous year's record. This was my third year attempting to get 365 painted. In 2013 I got 158, and 2014 I got 319. For some figures, like Historical infantry in particular, they'll very much be painted to a tabletop level rather than doing my best, though they'll still need to hit a minimum quality level to keep me happy.


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SUPPLY DROP!!!!!





Ok, a lot of this stuff has been a long time coming and has just happened to arrive all at once:

Video Games:
PS4 Lego Batman 3
PS4 Just Cause 3 Medici Edition
PS4 Dragon Quest Heroes Spec Ed.

Tabletop Games:
Zombicide Black Plague Core box
2x Battle for Calth (2 more due anytime now)
2x Dungeon Saga Carton A
Cthulhu Wars DVM pledge (I'm not game to try and unbox/inventory those yet - maybe on the weekend, or in a week's time!)
Warlord German (FJ) army deal + extra support weapons + transfers for my British armour
42 Various Sprues from Warlord's Black Friday Sale (16 Germans, the others various historical command sprues)
Sarissa Industrial Battlefield

1:6 scale figures:
2x DAM FSIN Saturn
2 x VTS Black Storm Guard
1 x Soldier Story KSK

wooooooooow

More pics! That's mouth-watering.

Eating dinner now, and starting to wind down but I'll see what I can do (even if it's tomorrow morning) - anything in particular?

Scale figures would be cool, I reckon you'll post the rest as you start building them what are you planning to do with the Calth sets?

Could be awhile before I build them properly, but I'll get some open-box shots. In the interim, here's a kitbash I did a couple of years ago of a TACP



More here:
https://azazelx.wordpress.com/2012/01/09/16-kitbash-hot-toys-tacp-meets-milmerit-spanky/




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Oh. Calth. Um, not sure yet. Just stockpiling for now. I'll eventually assemble and paint a bunch of them as either 30k or 40k. Might even play the boxed game!

That is very cool! Sort of glad I'm not into bigger scale stuff though...

Nice Haul

I'd be interested in seeing the Zombicide Black Plague Figures if you get a chance to snap some more photos.

Did you only get the Dungeon Saga Core A boxes? I'd of thought that you would have done some expansions, Or did they arrive earlier and I'm just so far out of the loop.

Great job on 385 . I might....Might hit 300 this year, which equal what i've done in the past 5-10 years combined

I used to be more into the 1:6 stuff, with lots of Hot Toys, movie figures, etc before their prices blew up a couple of years ago. Now I just get the odd military one, as well as various unlicenced movie/pop culture ones. The hardest part of that hobby is storage and display.

I'll see if the wife wants to crack open ZBP tomorrow - if so, I'll take some pics. With DS, they sent me my expansions directly (with their usual selection of missing and broken bits) which I've had for maybe a month now and the core boxes have only just arrived now.

And Theo.... only 300? You seem to paint hordes of zombies in your sleep. I can't believe it's only added up to 300?? When I look at my zombies and then your ones it makes me cry...

Nice Uruk Hai! I was going to use mine as an allied pikemen block from Kingdoms of Men, since they're neutral and can ally with anyone.

385 is a really good total for the year. I'm also working to try and get up to the 365 total, but I don't think I'll make it. I find the prospect of actually playing with stuff really motivates me to paint it, so I'm painting piles of stuff for RPGs at the moment and my historical armies are still sitting in their box unpainted even though intellectually I am excited about them, I just know it'll be a good while before I get to play with them. So I've done a surprisingly large number of Board Game minis this year, and bugger all historicals, which was my plan originally.

That's a mega-haul there, btw. Looking forward to seeing you work through it!

Just adding a couple of photos here since the December Project thread will fade into obscurity once it's done, while this one will remain as the main depository of my models here on Dakka.







More pics here or here.

Good stuff Az, keep it coming

The choice of colours on the weapons and armour really add to the piece. Your free hand is excellent as always.

Great work there Azazel :-)

Thanks guys. It went through some points where I wasn’t sure about he weathering but in the end I’m quite happy with it, and I really appreciate the confirmation. Now onto the other two, and if I can get them finished, I’ll add another for December.

Having the Talos done brings me to 386 for 2015.

There's some other 2015 stuff I've painted that I'll try and show off here shortly.

Yeah it’s a bit trite, but I don’t care. Have a great Christmas all. Enjoy the time with your families, friends and a bit of quiet time for painting, gaming, sleeping in, gorging and binging (on Netflix, natch!)


Here's this year’s Christmas Loot! (The Calth boxes got repurposed as gifts via the magic of Christmas Money.

They say that you shouldn’t post your presents to social media because criminals. I totally get that, so it’s lucky that my real name ain’t on here, I don’t use geotagged photos, and probably that my loot this year is a 14-year old boy’s dream, but notsomuch for “proper” grownups and criminals.

More models and games in the days to come, and I’ll have to come up with my gaming resolution(s) for 2016…

Have a great Christmas and stay safe!

Nice haul there Az. Have a wonderful Christmas

What do you use icestix for? Is that just an unfortunate choice of name?

Wow, great haul, very jealous. We are being terrible parents and making the kids wait till this afternoon to open their gifts . We will be heading to my parents for Christmas brunch shortly so they will get goodies there.

Also 300 is a rough guess. I know there's at least 200 zombies, plus space marines various other gribbley things. I did take about 6 months off though between my moms sickness and a malaise I was having at the beginning of the year (which is sort of returning now).

Good haul, many and varied nerdgoods.
Have a good holiday and then get back to showing us more shiny painted goodness

Nice collection of stuff there indeed! Merry Christmas!

What's the large thing with the T-70 X-wing on? A book? A model?

Happy Christmas to you too Azazel! The shape of the Decor icestix looks a little...questionable

Thanks, Jan!

Joyboozer wrote:
What do you use icestix for? Is that just an unfortunate choice of name?

Make your own icy-poles with juice or whatever. They're actually pretty good. And yeah, Thrax, I had a brief WTF are those? moment when I opened the wrapping paper...

Did you get Black Plague, Theo? Perhaps a different type of Zombie will spark your spirit again?

Thanks Grim. We watched a doco about Spartans today (after one about the early Assassins) and so started assembling a boc of Warlord/Immortal Spartans. Historicals for KoW, essentially. They'll be painted in a much more "git 'er done" way than most of my Fantasy stuff. Nothing worth photos yet, though.

 Paradigm wrote:
Nice collection of stuff there indeed! Merry Christmas!
What's the large thing with the T-70 X-wing on? A book? A model?

Thanks Para, and yep, 2 DK Star Wars books.

I haven't posted anything new from the December project in awhile. It's because I'm honestly not enjoying painting Be'lakor or the giant at this point. Bel's flesh-and-black look is tedious to paint, and the Giant's clothing issues are once again completely off-putting. (They're why he didn't get painted 20-odd years ago). So I've mostly been playing videogames instead, and after watching a documentary with Marouda about Spartans a couple of days ago, decided to harness her brief moment of enthusiasm and see if she wanted to work with me to assemble and paint up some Spartans together.

We cracked open the Warlord box, and found that their rebadged Immortal Miniatures sprues are completely the same across all three of their Greek ranges - the only difference being a unique command sprue for each. Bell (bronze muscle) curiasses are rare in each box (one per sprue of 8), with the majority wearing Linothorax (linen armour) and two out of every 8 wearing only robes. The command sprues add one more Bell curiass and another robe-wearer. So - no units uniformly all wearing bell curiasses unless we wanted to loot all of them from the other Greek boxes with the result that they would then have none in their units.The Spartan box's main distinguishing feature is a bunch of heads wearing the Pilos helm on the command sprue. So we had some decisions to make.



In the end we went for a "idealised fantastic" selection for the Spartans. We both felt that while the pilos helm might be accurate for (late) Sparta, it's ugly. So we went for a majority of corinthian-style helmets (worn earlier) which we'll be pairing with shields bearing the lambda (worn later). We're going with the Lambda to easily distinguish the Spartans from other Greeks and also the Macedonians that will be painted and assembled later. I know (from the research that I did while working out our options for these models) there are people over on TMP who'd happily tell me that I'm doing it wrong, a heathen and more besides, we're going for models that look aesthetically pleasing (to us) that can also be distinguished easily as Spartans by ourselves and out friends. Rivet-counters be damned!

The models took 3 days to assemble, and were sprayed last night with a Tamiya dark red. This morning I gave them a zenithal highlight of a brighter Army Painter red. Now I'm troweling acrylic putty onto the round Renedra bases to make their integral bases stand out a little less. In my researching, I found that the colour of the Linothorax worn by Spartans is debated, and may have possibly been red rather than buff/white so I think we'll go with the red, along with their robes and skirts in red.

These being historical figures of troopers rather than anything special, they'll be getting "fast, tabletop" paintjobs - with the same mentality of "get them done" as my Moria Goblins or the plastic Gondor Rangers. Base coat, simple highlight and wash, then a matte spray basically. The aim is to look good as a unit on the table from a foot or two away rather than look good as individual models.
Hopefully Marouda will keep her interest so we can get them finished inside a week - and then I can get back to this giant and daemon that have sapped my enthusiasm with a refreshed attitude.

Spartans look really good. I'm not enough of a history buff to say "there should be more/none of that armor", so all is well here.

I did get Black Plague, along with prison outbreak and recently getting Rue Morgue. I'm not at a loss for wanting to paint, just kind of waiting for the new year. Plus I hurt myself at work a couple months ago and sitting for prolonged times was not a good option. I'm back on the mend though.

Looking forward to seeing the Spartans painted! Even with a quick table top level job they should look very impressive en masse!

I love a good historical figure.

My wife (as a practicing archaelogist) would be able to argue the colour of their gear til the cows come home of you ever wanted. Can be quite fun pushing her buttons about it a lot of the time.

As the end of another year comes to a close, it’s only natural that people stop and take stock of the year that was. For hobbyists like ourselves – or indeed any people who work on projects or hobbies of ongoing concern it makes sense to look over what you’ve managed to achieve and look forward to make plans for the following year. Resolutions are a “normal” way to do this but I’m too old for that now, and I’d rather just keep (trying to) make incremental improvements and do better with various things all year ’round.

Hobby goals on the other hand, are perfectly legit. My main goal this year was to simply paint more models. Soft target was to beat last year’s total of 319 models and the Hard target was to paint 365 models. Last year I was well on target until I just stopped painting around October-November and petered out with 319. This year I had my eye on it, and watched myself sink into the same late-winter funk as worked ramped up to ridiculous levels at the end of the year. I credit painting at work for getting me through that painful time with some productivity, since there were more than a few weeks when the only painting that I managed to do was that 20minutes or so during lunchtime at work. In the end, I finished with 388. The list is already at the top of the page, so I’ll just link it rather than repeating it here – though I’ll have a separate “2015: Year in Review” post up shortly.


Hip Hop Hooray?

Now I’d like to look over my “other” goals from the last two years and see how I am with them now, at the dawn of 2016. For my own curiosity as much as anything else.

Goals for 2014:

Fantasy:
Finish the 2k pts Ogre Army for KoW – NOPE. Close, but hasn’t been on the radar for awhile. The two Chariots have been an issue.
Paint a 2k pts Dark Elf/Twilight Kin Army for KoW – NOPE. Not even close. The first unit got cockblocked by the banner. I should finish that.[/color[
Paint a 300?600? pt Allied Detatchment for KoW to ally with others (Giant, Trebuchet, Wolves) – [color=green]YEP – These have happened. They’ve mostly grown to army status.
Paint an Undead Army for KoW using GW, Mantic and LotR Undead (also doubles as an Army of the Dead for LotR SBG and WotR!) – YEP. Not every undead model I own is painted, but we have a fully-painted and functional Undead Army at this point.
Finish a ton of Men of Gondor for SBG/WotR and KoW armies of Man – YEP. This started as one of those detatchments, and grew into a rather large (for me) painted army. Still lots more models to go.

40k:
Resurrect/update my previously-finished old Dark Angels Combat Patrol into a 6th Edition 600-pt Combat Patrol
Paint 600-odd points of Deathwing as a CP
Paint 600-odd points of Ravenwing as a CP
Add some extra DA stuff back in – like the almost-finished Dreadnought, Asmodai, etc and Bingo! 2k+ point DA army!

NONE of the 40k stuff happened. I could blame the royal confusing clusterfeth that 40k’s rules have become in the past couple of years and it’s certainly a factor, but I simply haven’t gotten my Fantasy stuff done to the point where I’ve been able to move back to 40k.

2015’s Goals:

Last year at this time, I was still pretty much burned out on painting, and didn’t really set any goals. Over the course of the year, some “happened”, though. The first one was to COMPLETE my Gondor army for LotR/KoW. By this I mean to have every model that I own painted, with the only exceptions being any odd dregs leftover that didn’t fit into units. This later morphed into painting all of the Minas Tirith models, with the fiefdoms, particularly Dol Amroth to be their own, separate project.

The reason the above morphed so was because I got a ton of Moria Goblins painted, and decided that I’d like to paint every one of the little suckers that I own to get them done and dusted. I had about 140-ish plastics and a couple of dozen metals to go, plus a couple of trolls, etc. So Dol Amroth got downgraded.

But then – in order to have room for all of this, I decided I needed to clear off my painting desk, but not in the usual manner of dumping all of the half-painted models into cases and back onto shelves and into boxes, but to finish the bloody things off.

This became my penultimate project of 2015, as I got an awful lot of stuff done, and widened my scope to include figures that had been rotting in model cases for a long time, “finished” by the standard of their original day, but disliked enough by me to keep them there. Often it just took a new base and a bit of touch up to bring them back to life with a standard that I’m happy with today.

Finally, I had enough of all that, and decided that I wanted to paint some centrepiece models. I booked 2 weeks of Long Service Leave from work (I’ve never taken any before) and decided that I’d try to prep the models beforehand, and from December 4th when I finished, I’d get stuck right in. Well, as the best laid plans have it, instead of a clean break – I ended up doing an hour or so of work from home each day for the first week and then a bit more in the second. Which, frankly, was bs. Of the three models I selected to paint in December, I got one completed, and the other two have both stalled out at this point.

So now what? Well, time to set some goals for 2016. Here goes:

Paint more models overall – Soft Target is now 365, and Hard Target is 389 – one more than last year.
I think this is very achievable. I’ve got some small scenic items in mind to give me a nice initial boost for January. It’s not cheating – it’s planning!

Get a completed army worth of Ogres Finished – I’ll need to redo my lists since points changed in KoW, but I’m thinking 2k minimum with 3k as an ideal.
I haven’t counted them in awhile, plus changes to points costs. But I figure I’ve got close to 2k painted already, but I need to paint the Captain and ASB on chariots to have a “completed” army.

Finish all of my Moria Goblins – not much has changed here. I still need to do a GW direct order for about $200 for the last “bits”
Much the same as before. about 140 models plus some extras. They’re pretty simple to mass paint, so I think I can do it.

Finish all of my Minas Tirith Figures – Again carried over from an organic 2015 goal.
This one could be tricky, but then, they’re good fodder for painting at work.

Encourage Marouda to Paint more – never hurts to have a Hobby Apprentice, right? Or should I get extra geek points for instead saying Hobby Padawan?
She seems to have a confidence issue and is having difficulty with the “just keep painting” approach to getting better and more confident.

Greeks on the Table – Get the Mythical Greeks to the point where they’re a playable force. Even only an allied contingent in size.
Seems doable. I’ve got 2 units WIP right now, plus the Talos and the 2 Bulls. It shouldn’t be too much more to get them up and running. I'm taking the approach of researching them and then choosing to disregard whatever doesn't look as good in favour of what does.

Dark Angels on the Table – Resurrect/update my previously-finished old Dark Angels Combat Patrol into a 7th Edition 1k-point force.
Mostly I think I need to bring my 3rd-ed sub-10 squads up to full 10s. And get someone to do a list for me. Archer?

Get more half-painted crap finished – an ongoing project, methinks.
Might take more than 2016 to get it done, but I want to have the part-painted backlog finished within a year or two.



Allow myself more fun – Stop the regiments more frequently and allow myself to paint a dragon, a hero, a cool monster, a forge world model. And try to it at least once a month.
We’re all gonna die one day. May as well take the time to paint and finish some of the nicer models!

Oh yeah. Happy New Year and all that. Thanks to all of the people who read - and especially post on this blog. The feedback I get from posting here really makes a huge difference in helping to keep me motivated. But you knew that, anyway!

Good stuff Az. You sure did get a ton of great stuff done this past year. Have really enjoyed following your blog as you went along. Would defintiely love to see you take on some 40k but then I'm biased good luck in the new year and looking forward to more