Terrain is everything - Project Ω - Realm of Battle Board - 50 Shades of Red Oxide

Happy Hallowe'en! Dry your eyes and lets fix this mother! On with the shadow wash. You can see there is still some evidence of the Polyvine [the whiteish streaks towards the top of the board] but overall I'd say it's been reduced by 80%

Once again this could be considered a perfect place to stop and I bet this would ideal for most of what John Blanche does with his Inquisition models or those done by Spiky Rat Pack [which I think are done for JB]

The colours are very earthy indeed and more than suitable for that painterly look that's popular for INQ28.

I'm hoping that because I've still manage to retain some of the depth of colours from the original coat of paint there will in fact be much more to see in the details when I add the highlights.

It's such a relief that I don't have to go back to square one, square 2.5 is still rewarding for the effort put in so far.

Just to illustrate how bad the Polyvine can get, notice the white 'foamed blob' on the edge just where the clips go. Clearly this product is desparate to dry milky white. Goodness knows what I would do if it dried like that on a freshly laid hardwood floor - it's intended purpose!

4+

Somehow I forgot my own 'blog day'. I guess all the home improvements have taken their toll. However, it's been four whole years since I truly fell of the wagon, when after 10 months of painting and modelling I finally committed the ultimate act against ,y sobriety and started a blog. I won't do a review of this year like I did last time, because I pretty much did that for the hobby season but I will say a big thanks to all those who continue to support the blog.

THANKS

Yes, whether it's reading commenting, following or even lurking it's great that you keep coming back for more random chat and occasional pic of a model ;) I'd been thinking I hadn't had a 'confession' for a while but given my limited hobby activities at the moment due to the continued home improvements schedule. It's a bit tough to take stock of what's happening when most of the hobby room is taken up with furniture that still has to be taken out of packaging. Still, I have a couple of updates on my Realm of Battle board to come once that is out of the way I should be able to cross off my Blood Bowl Elves and then it's about time I revealed Project Z, not to mention crack on with my Dark Angels.

Anyway, I'll leave with some colour tweaked and tilt-shifted pics of some of my Armies on Parade Board because they're just OTT.

Armies on Parade 2014 - Southport

So I managed to get to Armies on Parade and this time I would face some competition, albeit there were only 3 entries [not including the stores] so whatever happened we were all going to get a prize. First up was Chris Draper's Ogres. I think Chris was actually in the year below me at school, we hung out a bit, I remember him coming along to a LARP event on the Wirral once.

Anyway, he does a lot of commission painting now so we had a chat about what he does, but he's currently too busy to keep a blog going so I can't share more of his work.

However, the Ogres were full of character and with plenty of Basil on the board to give it a leafy feel. 

Some very interesting individuals

It was all the little details that made this.

I particularly liked the lurking spider and handily he made good use of the Hallowe'en cobwebs to decorate the board.

I may be wrong but think this was done by a guy called Tom, who went to Lost Boys Gaming Club. It's been so long since I last went I may have got it mixed up but the plague marines were fab.

Consistent throughout, lots of little details and all excellent quality.

He deserved a medal just for painting Cultists, you know how difficult I found painting mine!

Nice little blue glow effect too.

Gotta love the eyeball in the Hellbrute.

Some cool Greenstuff sculpting on the Vindicator and I love the little old skool familiar joining the squad.

Lovely, if you can call plague marines lovely.

The store's effort, an Iron Warrior's fortress.

Once again full of character [although the manager did admit the board was the work of a previous manager]

Still the Army was created for the parade and the board is still no longer a requirement and they weren't in the competition anyway.

Lets sacrifice the Fist!

Love the chaos glow.

And my effort. I sadly bottled it a bit. I was a little late getting there and hadn't been able to set up the night before so with 20 minutes I didn't fill every nook and cranny as I'd hoped but did put as much new stuff as I could down.

I would have liked to put more and the manager was prepared to let me do so but in the end if I did it would have taken longer to pack away and that would have made me late leaving and would have caused issues on returning home.

So the end result was that Chris's Ogres took the win, I came second and Tom came third. I'm happy with that because I didn't add a whole lot to my army. There's a small amount of regret but I am pleased to have a different looking medal than another gold.

It's also nice that the other guys efforts were recognised, Chris was up till 1am painting the night before so that alone deserves credit.

Overall I'm just glad I got to take part, although sad I never got to create my original board, which I may have been a little upset if I hadn't won and I'd actually made it. 

Still, Liam won the Bolton AoP so go check out his blog if you haven't already.

Nu nids, missing nids and repackaged cheaper nids, nids, nids!

From out of the blue there's a rumour about a new Tyranid model up for pre-order next week. The Maleceptor/Toxicrene looks mildly interesting, moreso for the crazy sounding model than the leaked ruleset. It may actually be very good but I'm not particularly gifted at how these things can perform game-wise so I'll just have to let the interwebs tell me if it's any good. However, something was pointed out to me yesterday by the Southport GW manager and that is the Zoanthrope has 'SOLD OUT'. Now please note this is not 'temporarily unavailable' it has SOLD OUT. If you want to see what a temporarily unavailable looks like check out the Tactical Objective Cards, [because they're always temporarily unavailable!] So the question is if the Zoie has gone why is that? Is a plastic model, finally available, maybe three in a box with alternate bits to make Venomthropes in the offing? Who knows but it seems odd.

Meanwhile pre-orders have also gone up for Wrath of the Hive Mind a £100 set for what looks to be £135 worth of bugs. This looks like it should be every bug collector starter kit, a Hive Tyrant [although it ominously doesn't show it with wings, fingers crossed you get those too] a Tervigon. 20 Termagants and three Warriors... plus 3 bases of Rippers

This makes a decent core to your army and fills all your basic slots. I suppose the £105 Tyranid Swarm box also does that if you make your Carnifex into Old One Eye, but I still think this new box set is great, although I'm not sure I can justify getting it myself.

Otty's Inquisition force

Otty sent me a text message the other day asking if I could showcase the first completed figures of his Inquisition force. And why wouldn't I? Aside from the fact I'm desperate for some new content Otty is an amazing painter and converter. He's been alluding to this mythical army for the last couple of years [speaks the one who has 20 year old figures that have just been painted, although this does contain miniatures of equal history] and finally here they are:

Got to love what he's done so far, I see a lot of INQ28 stuff online, inspired by John Blanche and Otty seems to be tapping the similar grimdark future gothic anachronisms of the 40k universe. Here's what he had to say on the Facebook group:

First figures completed for my new inquisition army. Tried to paint to my best ability and I have stuck to my rule of converting every model, largely wearing dressing gowns with some metal. They are some of the first models I ever bought- over 30 years ago , proper vintage. These three are the first of a unit of 10 inquisitional all infantry. Hopefully more to follow.

And who doesn't want to carry two Storm Bolters! I can't wait to see what else he gets done, there's a lot of playful character in these miniatures which reminds us you can still have fun in the future where there is 'only war'.

Hope you like them, I recall he's also got some crazy Lord of the Rings conversions he may share if you want ;)