Hobby Season 2019/20 Review

The 2019/20 Hobby Season draws to a close, and how did I do? Events from October 2018 still mean the hobby isn't high on my list of priorities. Add in COVID19 lockdown for this year and my first task has been an odd one:

Develop a more healthy hobby/life balance - go to bed at a decent hour[ish]   

I think I managed the first part of this, I certainly feel less compelled to hobby if I don't feel like it. However, going to bed at a decent time is less of a success, in fact the clocks going forward in spring meant I was quite happily staying up to 1am because it just felt like midnight. On the plus side, because of lockdown I haven't needed to get up at 5:30am so I've actually been getting more sleep. I've been keeping track of this on Google Fit and so far this year 3 months have been +7 hours. Again, that's not sustainable, at some point I'll be back travelling to work and I'm going to have to get that bed time down. However, my eldest is off to Oxford University in October, so I won't be watching TV shows with him when he deigns to grace me with is presence. So I should be able to start painting earlier and I'll get into the habit of finishing at a sensible time. I'll probably even schedule specific nights for hobby and specific nights for family time.

 Find time to play some games, not just tournament play...

Secondly I was supposed to play more games. Obviously a global pandemic has but a dent in my gaming, but we did get together for a few games of Blackstone Fortress. Definitely the most fun we've had gaming as a group. Sadly that's meant 40k has been mothballed for a while, even 9th edition hasn't ignited my passion. I'm not upset by that, we'll be back playing BSF as soon as we all feel safe to do so and eventually see what 9th is about. Tournaments? Well I don't feel I'm missing out on that either. Sure I enjoy the experience but the current costs and events that are available aren't filling me with any desire. Add to that I'd struggle to keep up with the new rules doesn't inspire me to book any in the future.

Now to my actual hobby goals - by the looks of it I only managed to complete 5 out of the 16 realistic items on my list. That would appear disappointing but I'm genuinely OK with it. Here's what I did manage despite everything.

Ferron Fire Firs. I didn't take full TO DONE! pics and this is just one of the sets that I painted to add to the set I already have. One day I'll get to see all 3 on my table together - maybe that's a goal for next year? Great to get some terrain done though. 38 models though, that's not to be sniffed at 😉

I also painted up this banner for the base of Lady Pettorini. I'd felt the base was lacking something and a filthy Nurgle banner trodden underfoot seemed appropriate. With hindsight I'm not sure it did need it but it was an opportunity to play around with free-handing so I don't regret it.

I painted this Redemptor Dreadnought for Dreadtober, although I'm not going to include Primaris Marines in my Dark Angels army I felt I could fit this in.

We started playing Blackstone Fortress and between the 4 of us we all took a couple of heroes and villains to paint so we could have fully painted game quicker. I got Espern Locarno as my hero.

And the Chaos Beastmen as my villains. I painted them like my Garrek's Reavers.

I also finished up my original team colours Middenheim Marauders Blood Bowl team.

Blood Bowl Ogre was next to join the Middenheim Marauders and then I decided they'd look better with flocked bases.

So they got flocked!

Round about this time COVID-19 struck and lockdown began. So much hobby time one would think but I was totally tied up with my Deathwing Knights. They took SOOO long to do, which felt like forever, but without the lockdown it would have probably seemed even longer.

I also got these other 2 terminators painted.

And this Callidus Assassin. All of these models have been on my painting list for ages so it was such a relief to get them completed even if it wasn't a huge quantity of models for so much effort and time spent painting.

I followed up the hardship of all those Terminators with some 'easy' Tyranid Rippers. Painting something I was so familiar with was so refreshing, even though Rippers can be a a real pain to do whatever challenges they posed just felt so much easier to resolve compared to the Deathwing. My only frustration is the 2 missing Ripper bases I can't seem to locate in my boxes :(

These Imperial Knight extra weapons had been around for long time. In fact the black twin Icarus Auto-cannons are from Euronymous, my first completed knight. The new points increases in 9th mean that the carapace weapons may get more use as I try to fill out the odd points here and there, so really useful.

I painted 5 of my Blood Bowl Nurgle Team players, including their turn and re-roll counters.

Galvanic Servo Hauler. This sat 98% complete for so long, just the dials to do and varnish. Not totally convinced on the weathering for realism, but it was fun to do and that little push allowed me to get it varnished and complete.

Genestealer Familiars - another couple of hangers on. It was just the various bits of debris on the bases holding them back but again perseverance got them over the line.

I think that's 87 models all in, I didn't quite realise I'd done that many and the Deathwing Knights in particular feel like a massive achievement. They'd been so hard to do and so long I'm just glad I had the perseverance to get them over the finishing line. But the TO DONE! pile is only part of the story, I'll cover the Big Build in a bit but I was juggling so many other projects as well, getting them moved slowly forwards that could well conclude next hobby season. These WiPs include:

• Nurgle Blood Bowl team [third completed, rest basecoated]
• Orc Blood Bowl Team [very early days]
• Adeptus Titanicus Reaver Titan
• Adeptus Titanicus Warhound Titans 
• Tyranid Warrior
• Tyranid Hive Guard conversions
• Tyranid Devgaunts [nearly done]
• Tyranid Tyrannofex + additional weapons
• Tyranid Carnifex heads [half done]
• Genestealer Cult Abberants
• Genestealer Cult Acolyte Iconward

AND...

I did a load of DiY. Granted not directly hobby related but lets go back to point one:

Develop a more healthy hobby/life balance - go to bed at a decent hour[ish]

I've highlighted the important part. Many of the following tasks have been put off for far too long and painting the hobby shed was dependent on achieving the other tasks. Despite the shed needing new coats of paint to protect it, and therefore a priority, the other elements have been long overdue.

• Painted kitchen
• Painted en suite bathroom
• Fitted a new fence panel
• Painted all my fence panels
• Painted some of my mother-in-law’s fence panels
• Painted an outbuilding
• Painted my hobby shed

On the one hand this feels like far from the most impressive Season I've ever had but on the other I actually I did a lot, the trees certainly helped my numbers. And the WiP stuff leaves me well placed for next Season and some quick wins if I can get motivated.

The Big Build is my scaled down expectations to build miniatures. Building isn't always my favourite thing but without a construction phase I can't have a painting phase.

I kicked things off pretty early with the Genestealer Cult Iconward. The plan was to have him painted for the 'character' category in Battle of the Brush.

Espern Locarno from Liam's Blackstone Fortress was a quick win.

As was the 4 chaos beastmen I pledged to paint for our campaign. 

I got a Nurgle Blood Bowl team from my son for Christmas, we built these together and I based them up ready to paint together too!

Although I have a challenge to beat last year's hobby spends I treated myself to a Blood Bowl Ogre to join my Middenheim Marauders [and also another character for Battle of the Brush].

I've included 'easy build' models before and felt guilty about it and I do again, however Amallyn Shadowguide from Blackstone Fortress was quite a challenge. I just couldn't shake the idea of putting her on a step and so had to construct one out of a 25mm slotta base and a plastic gift vouchers.

I was lucky to get the Galvanic Servo-haulers on a copy of Warhammer Conquest.

I got all three of them built.

Including the crane.

I also built the Cerastus Knight Lancer for Adeptus Titanicus.

Not sure I should claim these as Liam technically built them.

But I did the bases and primed them so they're still within the Big Build parameters...

I got this Blood Bowl Troll of my mate Pete for my birthday.

And I built this Tyrannofex because I needed to throw another project into the mix to keep motivated and avoid painting my Land Raider Redeemer.

Blood Bowl - Nurgle Team 3 players TO DONE!

Afternoon #warmongers and #warhammercommunity I've been #paintingwarhammer in these 3 Nurgle #BloodBowl players. Right off the bat I do not know what is going on with my photography. There was an update on my Camera360 app that just would not achieve the same results that I'm used to. Ultimately I reinstalled an older version, but still got rubbish results. I then upgraded my phone but can't get what I'm after with the inbuilt camera software, or the new Camera360, which at least functions on my new phone but still smooths a lot of detail out. I'll talk about it later.

Although I did these three at the same time, rather than the solo miniatures I had planned originally they're very different and I think have different levels of success.

The variety is to give me opportunity to play around with different techniques. I'm sacrificing a lot of consistency for that variety and it's become far more challenging than I thought it would.

Subtly different but also consistent with my test model. 

Slightly brighter orange overall on the 3 new ones. I didn't highlight the test models armour trim but I think if I switch between some that are highlighted and some not there will be enough models of each to not make it noticable. 

This was definitely the most successful of the 3. The red raw skin blended really well with the sickly yellow main colour.

The tar sludge, gloss and Tamiya Clear ReD X-27 worked so well on the lower legs too.

The Pestigor came right in the end. I managed to add a bit more variety in the skin tone. Far from perfect but I'm happy with the end result.

The woody/horned growths worked out OK too, lets hope I can repeat that on it's sibling.

The least successful of the 3 in my opinion. I managed to add in some more tones to the skin. It's more finished looking than last time but still not what I was hoping for in my green experiments. 

But the transitions to the red fleshy parts worked really well and I'm really pleased with those pustules on his arm.

The face is a bit messy too, with limited definition. However, here's an example of the photography spoiling things. The image on the left is a screengrab from the Camera360 preview. The pic on the right is the actual shot and you can see how much smoothing is taking place.

 

Some more pics of the first model as I wrestled with getting the pics I was happy with.

Again, screengrab on the left [very sharp], final pic the right, smoothed and unfocussed on the eye. 

At least you can see the tar here.

And these were pics straight from my OnePlus camera app, even with my two light setup

Failure to get good pictures was another reason I felt demoralised. I couldn;t blog these were complete because they look rubbish.

Almost unusable.

Again I think this is a screengrab, where you can see the detail in the teeth, the bloodied bits on the shin and some of the veins on the belly.

The final pic, all smoothed out. It's almost a watercolour effect like that art filter app. Now I know my pics have filters applied to them but I think the fact Camera360 is predominantly a selfie app it's smoothing things, which is really annoying. I can't seem to get the sharp pictures with the colour tweaking I used to and I can't seem to set up the normal camera to take the pics instead...

Anyway, I got to use the Great Big Minor Project Galactic Stamp of Approval before the end of the season at least.

Where's my head @?

Obviously I haven't been blogging much, nothing drastic has happened but like many it's been a little challenging of late. Not so much of a 'perfect storm' but a 'collection of unsettled weather patterns'! 😉 Lockdown has been relatively simple for me, in some respects I've rather enjoyed it. But I did have to take my annual leave, as my renewal date was coming up and I can only carry so many days over. So I had two weeks off and I painted a LOT of things, but not hobby things. These included:

• Painted en suite bathroom
• Fitted a new fence panel
• Painted all my fence panels
• Painted some of my mother-in-law’s fence panels
• Painted an outbuilding
• Painted my hobby shed

Not to mention painting the kitchen earlier in lockdown. And you can bet these are going down as TO DONES! on my Hobby Season, regardless of their non-hobby related categories! After months of sitting on my behind this amount of physical work, especially during the heatwave, was a lot for me. I was quite tired by the end of it but pleased with my achievements. The heat also killed a lot of motivation for painting figures [as I saw with a number of other people on twitter]. Throw in the fact I have to whip out my laptop to do any blogposts and right now It's just a little too much to get motivated.

I've managed to dip in a bit here and there but I'm trying to be strict and not take on a big project as I have that Land Raider to finish. If I have 5 minutes or so I've been painting another Nurgle Bloater but the Land Raider is an obstacle I must overcome. Right now I'm just feeling fatigued and although I've done some silly late nights I've also been good, getting in some pre-midnight bedtimes!

My son managed to avoid most of the A-level fiasco, got the results he needed. But very early, Worcester College Oxford formally announced they would honour all offers, regardless of results so he was safe anyway! Happy Days! There's now less than 50 of those Happy Days before we take him to uni so spending time with him, where possible, is a priority. As such the hobby may take a backseat - I'll have significantly more time when he's flown the nest...

So, right now I need to catch up with some blog posts. I've completed some things, so need to do TO DONE! posts I need to prep for my Hobby Season Review and prepare stuff for 2020/21. I'm not stressing over anything as I still keep my toe in with my twitter posts - the occasional #BrianTheSewerVent or #SwordsAsWalkingSticks

The 2020/21 Hobby Season starts soon, join me!

Afternoon #warmongers and #warhammercommunity the 2020/21 hobby season will be starting soon so for those alumni who joined in last season it's time to start looking back at your  TO DO lists - at what you've TO DONE!, what might have slipped and those lovely unexpected successes that happened despite life getting in the way and loss of mojo - I speak from experience [yet again].

The original plan when I started with 'big stamps of approval' was that I wouldn't do multi-coloured stamps, just alternate between red and green but who was I kidding? As the  2019/20 season has felt like a bit of a bust and I love the Great Big GALACTIC Stamp of Approval I kind of wanted to keep it, or swap the background for a different galaxy. In the end I had another idea and asked Marc from oldschoolg4m1ng.blogspot.com which to go with and he thought a new stamp would help move things forward [we can come back to GALACTIC stamps another time]. So I give you the official 40kaddict 2020/21 Great Big GRANITE Stamp of Approval! That's right folks I've come back to earth with a nice salmon, rose, peach, whatever you want to call it piece of granite. Feel free to download and use them on your blog as and when you get stuff  'TO DONE!'

Or you can record your achievements with an 'unbranded' version.

And should you feel inclined to differentiate your efforts yet further here 's the major goal stamps

And minor goals [which I actually found a use for last season].

And I also got the Big Build...

 and Base [and obviously Prime] Stamps done too. I heartily recommend this video from Tabletop Minions to understand where I was going with the 'Big Build' concept, he's touched on and expanded exactly why I created this a few years back.

Just a reminder of what it's about, in 2011 I made my first To Do List, amusingly it now looks like this:

• AoBR Tactical Squad
• AoBR Dreadnought
• AoBR Terminators
• Scout Squad
• Ravenwing bike squad
• Dark Angel Drop Pod
• Purity Seal all of my son's Tyranids
• Gloss Varnish all of my son's Tyranids
• Tyranid Prime
• Mycetic Spore
• Paint Vent Tower
• Paint defence platforms x4
• Complete pot pourri vegetation
• Complete future containers
• Complete 40k Cathedral tower
• STC Single story ruin
• STC Hex Defence platforms
• STC Targus Assault Blockade
• STC Vent tower
• STC Athena plateau
• STC Mercury plateau
• STC 40k Cathedral tower
• 60mm Dreadnought crater

So 4 things still haven't been done and quite frankly never will ;) . The purpose was to try to focus my efforts to outline a list of things I'd love to do over a twelve month period and if I achieved any of them great, all of them, so much better. But more importantly I needed a structure to cling to when my efforts became aimless. That's not to say deviations from the list were forbidden it was more for when I went 'well what's next?'

It became an annual blog post to review what I'd done and set new tasks and throughout the year I would reveal my 'To Dones!' as completed items both on and off the list. Showcase posts are nothing new to hobby blogs but again it was a structure to help build the identity of this blog. Then in 2014 I invited readers and passers-by of the blog to join in. Well, when you have a good idea why not share it around. I got about 10 people joining in and it looked like we were quite a supportive little bunch. I think over time steam ran out a little bit but folk continue to join in each year and hopefully the same will ring true for 2020/21.

To help things out a bit I've created a Hobby Season Facebook group, it's here:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/278747245819138/

So, if you're joining in just ask and I'll add you into the group, that way you can share your blog posts or any efforts to those also joining in. I hope this platform will allow more interaction for those taking part and keep us all motivated.

I guess the last question is why 28th August as the start/end date, why not January 1st?

I think back in 2011 it was at that time I thought a structure needed to be in place and it was as good a time as any to post a To Do List, afterall the footy season starts around this time too, no one complains about that, do they?

Anyway, 28th August join me for the new Hobby Season :)

Belated 5th Anniversary of the birth of the Man Cave

Afternoon #warmongers and #warhammercommunity I've had my man cave for 5 years now, it was originally installed on 27th July 2015 and as I've been a little busy this year with painting my kitchen, bathroom and fence panels I hadn't had time to celebrate.

Additionally, I'd been planning to repaint the shed so I thought I'd just wait a bit so I could share it's fresh new coats.

I had to sand this baby first, which was an absolute nightmare. So many people say preparation is important but I hate sanding. But I did it, washed it down and got two coats on the front and sides.

Once again I scrimped on the back, I only did one coat, it's a nightmare to get behind between the shed and the hedge and I'm constantly at risk of cramp or pulling my back again.

I'd previously filled in all the nail holes so it was much easier to paint this time round. I've a third of a tin of paint left, I may do that again next year and fill in some more gaps in all the corner strips and the bevelled timber. I'd thought about doing it this time but just wanted to get on with it. Hopefully I'll have more energy next time.

Also I painted all the metal work black. I used some matt black spray in some places - the door latches which immediately came off on the Cornish Cream paint. I also used matt black Humbrol enamel on the hinges, just to give it a nice touch.

As I continue to work from home and my wife needs her workspace on the landing back I may well have to tidy inside so I can set up my laptop and work from here. Surrounded by hobby I'll have to resist the temptation though and keep focussed! 😉