29 October 2017

Space ork squad leader

As we come to the close of Orktober, I find that trying to batch paint hasn't quite worked out, for the month-long painting challenge at least! I find myself with ten partially painted orks, and only one painted. I hope I'll get the others done over the next few weeks, but in the meantime here is a squad leader (if you go by the tab), or Ork Nob with Bolter and Bolt Pistol if you go by the 1991 catalogue.

I may add some orange "alien desert" clump foliage to his base, but otherwise I'm calling him done.


28 October 2017

3D dungeons, part 2

Following on from this post...

It turns out that Frank is not just a modelling inspiration for yours truly, but also an open-handedly generous and helpful chap. Within a few daylight hours of me emailing him to ask how much silicon he'd needed for his mammoth project, I'd had two detailed replies and plenty of good advice.

First, it turns out he needed FIFTEEN kilos of silicon just to make the moulds (Side note - mold is the American spelling, mould the British - both are used for the black gunk that grows in damp corners AND the cavity to pour plaster or resin into. Fun fact!). Fifteen! A quick scan of ebay suggested that this would come to about £250. Gulp! Add in Frank's estimate that the resin needed to fill those moulds the requisite number of times (just over 25kg), and that's another £300. Or more. And that's assuming I don't make any mistakes, which is unlikely since it would be my first casting project, and without the cost of making the original masters.


Sigh...

27 October 2017

A Heroquest Orc (my ScaleCreep entry)

First posted on Scale Creep as part of the Heroquest Hero Quest challenge.
Thanks for inviting me to join in, fellas!

The 6th Heroquest Hero Quest orc, or, the THIRD Heroquest orc, as I suppose this post might originally have been called as I signed up for orc number three.

Now the astute among you may notice that this means that orc number three comes after the fourth and fifth orcs, and that this means this orc is both three and six, but that's not a mistake as you might initially assume. Nor is it that I am spectacularly bad at finishing things (like, for example, blogging about a figure that has been painted for months) - what a suggestion! No, it is deliberate because it follows the infamously non-linear, occasionally non-Euclidean, and perpetually non-sensical counting pattern* of orcs themselves. I'd go into this in more detail, except the requisite chemical consumption for it to make sense is not a suitable topic for a family-friendly blog like this one.

[note from the producers : Since herding painters is even worse than herding cats, this will be the sixth orc that should have been third since the third will come later. Please don't ask.]

What's that? You want a picture of a painted miniature, not a monograph on orcish numerological peculiarities? Suit yourself. *grumble grumble* Peasants! Ignoramuses! 




26 October 2017

Dammit, Frank!

Around about this point in the year (October half term for us teachers), I start thinking about what gaming projects and ambitions I want to set for myself for next year. For painting miniatures, I've got three priorities: more progress on my Chaos project, finish the World's Edge Wyverns bloodbowl team, and crack on with all the space orks I bought over the last month (more on them over the next couple of months as well). BUT, that's not the only part of this hobby that I enjoy, I also like to write and refine rules or scenarios (I'm excited about contributing to Whiskey Priest's dark ages mythology skirmish... thing for example), and increasingly to build terrain.

So, there I was, idly browsing t'internet and pondering future projects, when Frank happened.


20 October 2017

A little more progress

My wife had some of her friends round last night, so I escaped to my painting desk in the cellar and splashed a bit more paint around.






17 October 2017

A little progress

My ork horde is slowly getting itself battle-ready, with a little help from a couple of hours in front of the telly. Not ideal lighting for doing so, but colour blocking is coming along nicely.


9 October 2017

Weekend catchup

The overlap between oldhammer and being (or expecting to be soon) a parent of young children was pretty clearly shown yesterday when I posted the picture below from my weekend prepping my recently acquired Space Ork Raiders set (RTB02, I think) and got well over a hundred likes/comments. I guess that puts the majority of online oldhammerers in the late twenties to mid forties bracket...


6 October 2017

Double duty

Because my output has been so low recently, I've double-entered the beastlord below for an Asgard Minatures painting challenge, as well as an oldhammer forum Golden Gobbo thing. Photo sharing was proving a problem, so I'm posting them here to share over there. If that makes sense.


3 October 2017

Orktober

No matter what I've tried, I just haven't been able to get back into the painting groove since Dad's funeral back in February, apart from a couple of painting challenges. So, maybe, another painting challenge (orktober) will break the funk?

It comes at a good point, anyway, with my impulse idea to run Battle at the Farm for my boys in the new year. Small padded envelopes are starting to drop through the letterbox again, and I've the orks either nice and shiny again or back into the last dregs of my last Fairy Power Spray to get rid of the stubborn bits. I'm using the figures from the RTB02 Space Ork Raiders set:

Picture from Stuff of Legends

1 October 2017

Corrupting the youth - or is it the other way round?

Mini-Rab #1 had just started at a new school and, as a way of getting to know the other kids, has joined almost every club going - a bit like a university fresher, but without the alcohol-fuelled excess. I hope. He is only nine!

Why is that relevant to this blog? Well, one of the clubs he's joined is run by his science teacher and seems to be a general "geek club", including lego robotics... and Warhammer 40k in its latest incarnation. Yes, despite my best efforts, he is desperate to join in as they push hordes of unpainted, badly glued lumps of expensive grey plastic around. Fortunately I had a squad of kroot in a box and his automatic assumption was that he'd paint them "at least a bit" before they saw table time to see if he likes the game. He wants to paint for about an hour each weekend until they're finished, so they're a bit more painted each week as he plays with them. Good lad! Perhaps 8th Ed will float his boat, perhaps oldhammer will keep him - as long as he's playing with his friends, and will indulge me in my oldschool gaming preferences from time to time, and having fun, who cares?

So, he sprayed...