Turelio's Hobby Hoard

I decided to get some painting in last night, in an effort to get some Malifaux minis ready for a few possible games today. I built the Steam Arachnids a while ago, and knew I had a Soulstone Miner tucked away, so I got them all prepped up. I didn't like the prospect of pinning the spiders to Ghost Town bases like the rest of my Rail Crew, as I didn't think there would be a connection point. Using some slate chips, plastic cacti, and green stuff, I textured the bases and pressed the spiders in. I also textured the gap between the Miner's base insert and base. I filled the areas I need texture roughly with lumps of green stuff, then attacked it with the knife point of a sculpting tool. I had lost the notes for the Rail Crew paint scheme, so needed to try to match it. I'll also probably use these kind of bases as opposed to the Ghost Town bases, which are in short supply now. Eventually, I suspect that if there are other consistent models which are close to the rig...

I left it late to enter a local painting comp, and needed something quick to do this weekend. With a theme of "heroes", I was going to do an SDE figure and leave it at that, but I started digging through my old metals when I found the mini I needed. Sarah, Vampire Hunter. It's an old CMON mini, and I always wanted to do a scenic base for her. Granted, I didn't have the time to do what I wanted, but this was an action out of necessity, and if I didn't do something now, I probably never would... I used an old mdf disc as the base, and started by drilling a hole for her feet close the the edge. The background would be a grave with uneven ground. I puttied the grave in first, and added an mdf headstone, then more putty for support. I added spots of putty over the base to make the ground uneven. I also added a Secret Weapon skull in the ground as something to break up the "just ground" feeling. I then used Sandy paste for the grave, and pumice paste for the r...

I've not been painting much lately, but I've been trying to build a lot of the models sitting at my desk so that I can get them ready for painting. Here's what I've been getting built over the last few weeks... Mantic Dwarves! OK, so they were half built when I got them, but I've finished building and figured out how they all rank up, and labelled them to save on confusion. I still have to go and clean off burrs and mould lines, but these should be things I can quickly paint up to build a force. A Ulix crew (or at least the start of one) for Malifaux. This is the standard box set, plus The Sow, Old Cranky, and some Piglets. I want to eventually expand the crew (lots of pigs!), but this will be a good start. I really liked the models once they were built, with Old Cranky and his pipe probably being the fiddliest detail in the crew. More Neverborn! The Sorrows will be added to Lilith's force, The Carver will join Pandora as a Killjoy proxy (I have a lot of things ...

I've managed to play a few games over the past few weeks (or at least attempt to play them). I thought I'd do a quick run through of what I played. I played TMNT Shadows From The Past by IDW with some family over the long weekend. There may have been alcohol involved for a few members of the table, it may have been late, so it may have been a bit hard to understand, especially when 3/4 of the table aren't gamers... It was still a good chance for me to learn the rules live. I like the mission system and the way it evolves as you go, and think fans of the game could get a lot of replay out of it. I also really like the dice co-op mechanic, and that the Turtles all behave differently, so you quickly get situations where Mikey hands out movement, and Donatello hands out defence. I'm keen to play it again with a few of my regulars. The Others by CMON got played on Tuesday. Again, this is one I hadn't played live, so I stumbled over the rules a bit as well. I'm prett...

I grabbed a bunch of minis the other night, with the intent to work on some for the 48 Challenge mentioned in Bingo post. My intent was to do a horse drawn limber from Flames Of War, but while I like the models, I was a bit intimidated by the number of parts in them. They will be a future project, but I decided to do the rats from the Mantic Dungeon Critter box. After thinking the resin blocks off all the models in the kit, I cleaned up the rats, roughly filled in the holes in the base with Vallejo Plastic Putty, and got them ready to prime. The resin is really nice. It holds sharp details, and there has only one rat with a slightly miscast area (lack of texture), but it's so small it's barely noticeable when painted. The resin is also a bit softer than I've worked with before, but also firm. I was able to snip and cut pieces without much force, but it's still solid, and they have a lot of fine details like the tails which show well. Whatever Mantic are doing resin wis...

So, I'm going to blog about something, then you'll rarely see progress on it over the next few months. Nothing new, right? Anyway, at the start of the year, I was talking to two of my friends who had recently got back into painting. As a matter for motivation, a bingo challenge was suggested. You've probably seen a few of these about. But between the three of us, a few different ideas were into the mix, and somewhere along the way titles were added. No, the diorama one is not a typo. Think about it for a moment. Then wonder how that's related to dioramas... So a few of my most recent projects have been related to this specifically. The orcs, the lynx, and terrain have all been related to this. It's actually got me planning projects in advance, and looking forward to trying different things. I've also figured out a few ways to actually game the system as well :) But how is it going, and has it interfered with my previous painting plan? OK, and somewhat. I...

Remember these minis from a few weeks ago? I decided last week I need to get the choppers painted, as I could use them in a challenge I have going with two friends. Surprisingly, they got done pretty quickly... It was pretty quick to start. I gave the rotors a spray of gw black as they were going to be 90%+ black anyway, and the bodies a spray of Chieftain Green. I found I ended up using about 5 coats as the colour was pretty thin, but at the end the details were all clear, and it was a nice solid colour. For the main colours, I stuck with the painting guide in the Iron Maiden book. In hindsight, I probably shouldn't have done an all over wash, but just did the panel lines. However, I'm still happy with how they turned out by this stage. I continues on, picking out weapons, markings, and some other details. It took maybe two and a half hours to get the main bodies and camo done, then another 2 hours to do all the details such as weapons, markings, and windows. (It's quite ...