GW Manchester Battle of the Brush - August - Big Models

Following on from July's Battle of the Brush [or 'Tale of our Warlords', as it's also known], August's category was Squads. I entered my [still wet] Ravenwing Dark Shroud - a model in the category completed in that month! My goal is just to achieve the 12 entries over the course of the year and as you can see the standard is exceptional each month so the competitive aspect will be tough, hence why I'm just along for the ride.

I've had a number of technical issues, hence why it has taken so long to get these pics sorted. Hopefully that's all fixed now and the winner for August was this fantastic Renegade Knight

2nd was this Repulsor tank.

3rd was yours truly with my Land Speeder Dark Shroud. I must admit to being honoured but a little 'unmoved' by the accolade. As much as I anticipate the reveal of the awards each month it would be disingenuous after my assertion I'm only in it to take part and then jump for joy when I win something. It's difficult to reconcile, I hope I'm explaining it enough, emotionally there's a lot of baggage. Anyway, the Slaaneshi Greater Daemon got the most inspiring award.

I'd taken these pics on another occasion because I was so impressed.

The creative use of sprue on the base was also a nice touch, and if you check out the new terrain elements for Warhammer Underworld's - Beastgrave you will see a definite similarity!

Other entries included this Invictus suit.

A couple of Deff Dreads.

Kastellan Robots and their 'handler'.

Venerable Dread and Abbaddon.

Another Venerable Dread and Mortarion.

Greater Daemon of Khorne.

Shadowsword.

With LOTS of weathering.

Magnus [who did a number of things wrong].

Giant [Mangler?] Squig?

Greater Daemon of Nurgle and the Night Haunt gibbet guy.

Arch-Lord Discordant.

And another pic of my own entry.

Once again I was compelled to take pictures of the store armies. I may well have taken the same pics previously but never mind enjoy once more Ork Speed Freeeks

And the crazy insane, Chaos Necron Tau conversions, which I have more pics next time.

Red Planet BASE! - If in doubt - BASE!

An update of some WiPs, it should be a small mid-week post but access problems to the standalone laptop means this is the only post I have to share 😔 With the Ravenwing Dark Shroud done and my recent review of 'what's on my palette' I just needed to 'flashback' these pics of how I got here. The Dark Shroud out of the way it just made sense to get some basing complete too so I had options going forward. As you can see the Redemptor Dread, Abberrants, Iconward, Rippers, Devgaunts, HIve Guard, lone Tyranid Warrior and even started the Geneestealer Familiars.

Various highlights later.

The Redemptor Dreadnought getting ready for Dreadtober. I know, I know you're supposed to make and build it wholly in the month but I know my speed and even getting to this stage it'll be a challenge for me to get it all done only in October...

One of the key drivers for this was the Ferron Fire Firs, which I've already covered but it's important to reiterate that tagging on another set of similar processes to existing task means you're adjusting your mindset only a little and the outcomes far outweigh the extra effort needed.

I have to be careful now though as I'm eager to move along with so many of these things but in reality I should be preparing for winter. With difficulties to prime models the more that's ready to go the better and the using up my 'stores' could be problematic... Luckily my project planning should keep that from happening. In the mean time I get a Great Big Galactic Big Build Basing Stamp of Approval! I probably deserve more than one for this, but it's difficult to decide, do I get 1 for 40 trees, 1 for the lone Tyranid Warrior and 1 for the two Hive Guard? So best just award the 1 and move on.

Whats on my palette?

Bless me readers for I have sinned, it's been over 6 months since my last confession! I've had quite lot of structure to what I've been doing so it didn't really require an overview to keep track.

But with the new hobby season I Feel like I've got a lot on my plate, but not stuffed with things I don't like - a huge buffet of delectable treats that I want to sample and gorge on until my plate is empty! So where am I at? Having just completed my two sets of Ferron Fire Firs and then varnishing the original set I already feel like I'm off to a great start, even though their potential use is thoroughly limited. Now I'm still using my Trello list which is a little odd as covers most of my To Do List but has extras/missing elements. However, it's nice to have a variety of tools to keep track of what's what, this is another one afterall! I'm even considering deploying Post-It notes in the mancave of each job and creating a tactile physical representation of what is being done/completed.

Anyway I had shared a Guardian article about how to tackle your To Do List, with the primary rule being doing attempt more than 3 jobs at a time as any more can be overwhelming. However, I'm currently in a position where my painting project amount to six items:

1. Genestealer Abberants
2. Genestealer Iconward
3. Genestealer familiars
4. Blood Bowl Humans
5. Callidus Assassin
6. Extra Knight weapons

There's a disparity in the amount of work in each of these and some are almost complete but I just can't/won't push that final furlong with them. But reconciling the issue of just 3 asks is based on shared elements. The Aberrants had some grey areas to do, so I slipped in some quartering of the Blood Bowl Humans. I hate doing that job but once again I'm using the crest of my current positive hobby mojo to motivate me to get these bits done. Any time I feel it's tedious I just stop and go on to something else. 

This has all made me think quite hard about the variety of rules and tips I've lived by to keep hobby momentum. I really think I need to formalise them to help. I think they could be like a set of commandments [but more like guidelines] but then the more I think it feels like a process diagram with if/and/or states because there are no hard and fast rules to keeping busy. From my experience sticking to just one approach is one of the hardest ways to maintain your hobby. But, there are loads of people ho would swear blind that a systematic strict way of working is what gets them results - so you see no single solution to this varied hobby.

Now on top of that painting list I've also sculpted, yes the Tyranid Void Shield Generator has had some DAS clay added to it. I had been putting it off, for over 3 years now, purely because I wanted to video how to do some of the tendon bits. I finally did a clip and I desperately want this complete , so there's quite a competition for my limited hobby time.

What I have realised is that by attempting so many jobs simultaneously I'm actually making inroads into my Big Build from last season, when in reality it would be best to have those to do over Winter - I really need to build more now, which I suppose makes the VSG a good fit. But I also have the remaining GW Manchester painting challenges to do, as well as Dreadtober and that means there will be a lot of chopping and changing in these priorities. Whether that kills momentum n some of these tasks has yet to be seen but I hope not.

One other key observation I've made is setting a task for the evening and completing it is a real buzz. If you really want that hobby high then that's a definite tactic, for instance I set myself the tasks of  matt varnishing some of my Ferron Fire Firs, painting the bone elements on my Abberrants and some small colours elsewhere. To set that goal, go out and achieve it felt so great. Progress is always a key motivator and sometimes the tasks we set are a little difficult to perceive in isolation on a model, but when presented as a task and that task is ticked off at the end of the session it becomes immaterial what it was, just that it is complete. Once again it's mind games and tricks to keep going when you might start to lose confidence, hence why I switched in the Post-Its. I could have easily used a tick-list but by mixing things up it feels fresh and organised in a different way.

Personal update

Just a quick update on how things are personally, so please disregard if you're only here for the hobby. The headline is that things are 'good'. We had 4 nights away at Ribby Hall Village just outside Blackpool. It's a small holiday village filled with Tim Burton-eque pastel coloured villas/lodges. We managed to go a week with the worst outbreak being the good natured banter between the four of us. We played, Catan, Dobble and Jenga and I was routinely the butt of everyone's jokes which I'll take any day if it puts a smile on their faces.

I have become the Beta male!

We had a visit to Alder Hey the week before for Oscar's latest MRI scan, alongside his hydrotherapy. Then we got to see the Oncologist later the day. I have to say leading up to the day it was horrible. I knew it was going to be like that - inbetween scans you [mostly] forget, and get on with life but as a scan date approaches you suddenly become fearful and it all comes pressing in on you. The scan showed everything was 'stable', which is the next best thing to signs of reduction. The Oncologist is happy with that so we're as happy as we can be. The radiotherapy damages the cancer cells and because they're 'foreign' cells the body doesn't repair them because it can't identify what they're supposed to be. So if they're not getting bigger they're hopefully dead and will eventually be absorbed/discarded. At least that's the way we understand it.

We took Oscar fishing, his first time ever and after countless tiny Rudd, landed this 4-5lb Carp off sweetcorn!

He's happy though and due to go back to school full time [will have gone back by the time you read this]. There are still challenges, he gets easily worried about any illness being something more sinister than it is and despite still taking daily anti-nausea tablet he has had a number of bouts of projectile vomiting. The next scan is in November, these will be every three months and then six months for the next 4.5 years but as we approach the 1st anniversary of discovering his brain tumour I'm keen to keep this clock moving. I don't want a situation where we don't appreciate the progress, the things we've done despite horrible bits.

We also went to Ormskirk Motorfest and we had to get a pic of Oscar with a Traffic Officer vehicle and a roll-up banner that I made for them. So things are good and we'll keep moving on until November and the next scan.

Terrain is everything - Ferron Fire Firs

My last update on these was April 2018. They've essentially sat in a box untouched until now. Other projects take priority and terrain often falls by the wayside. Frustratingly not a lot needed doing to complete them - the Red Planet BASE! and some additional highlights on some of the trees for variety.

I did my Red Planet BASE! highlights, I also did all the Genestealer Aberrants, Hive Guard, Rippers, Termagants, Tyranid Warrior and Redemptor Dreadnought while I was at it - you see that's the advantage of the Big Build programme, it allows you to get them ready for basing.

I then did the extra highlights of the mid-yellow [lemon] and then threw on some white for super hot streaks of combustion. Hopefully they'll fit in with the other set I've done previously, although the very reason for the extra highlights is variety so not sure how 'fitting in' is supposed to manifest itself as I've expressly painted them different...

Wraithbone chips next and then a quick varnish. I actually have once of those cheap spray-can car varnishes so I decided to give it give a go. It seemed the easiest way even if the soft cover makes varnish almost redundant. The red trees are from the first set I bought, where I didn't paint the big trees because I thought they were too big - this was before LoS for Knights was needed, so I'm finishing these off too.

The clear lacquer did alright and the 'bottle brush' feels slightly more substantial know because of it. 

However, it is glossy, which for the trees I actually like.

But for the bases I don't.

Protection wise I'm satisfied but I'll be painting all the bases with my Winsor & Newton Matt Varnish. Not only will this add more protection where this terrain is prone to damage but also supply the finish I'm after.

It'll be dull 'drone' work, that I'm not particularly looking forward to but it's just the one last step and I can tick it off my To Do List as a great start to the new season - terrain ✔️, quantity ✔️, long time in production ✔️

I also picked up a couple of extra art acrylics, so I've got my infra-red spectrum going here. I need another can of clear lacquer to varnish up my first set of trees to the same level of protection but typically Home & Bargain is out of stock.