Blu-Stuff is the Tru-Stuff

A few months back, in preparation for my Heresy Space Wolves project, I bought a bit of Blu Stuff to help me cast a few items I wanted to work on for the army. I hadn't gotten to the point where I wanted to cast anything just yet, until now.

One of my Chanukah gifts from Hubs was the Forgeworld Angron. I took him out and started getting him assembled recently, and it dawned on me that all of the armor in the kit is (of course) an appropriate style for a Heresy army. This made me especially giddy when I took a closer look at the backpacks- and there my first casting project was born.

All nice and Heresy appropriate.

 I've been hemming and hawing over how exactly I wanted to modify the current style backpacks that came in the Grey Hunters box to match them to the MK IV and V armor patterns that I'm doing for the army. Now I can cheat! I figure I'll make about 10 or so of these to mix into the MK IV half of the army. I had planned to buy a set of 5 of the IV and V marines to mix in, but at £23.00 (~$35 USD) per set, I just need to rely on my ingenuity here. I can't do $70 plus shipping for just ten guys, even if they're ten really awesome guys.

When trying this out, I simply made a mold of the part of the backpack I wanted to copy. I didn't worry too much about getting the top part of the backpack looking nice, because I am planning on only using the bottom half (under the blue line in the photo) and attaching it to the top half of the Space Wolf ones that came in the Grey Hunters box. It'll mean a little pinning and more time, but the wolf ones have a lot of the wolfy bits and bobs on them that it would be even harder for me to replicate than this.

Guest on Of Dice and Men Podcast

As promised, I was a guest on Of Dice and Men a little while back and the episode has finally been released. We talked about Kingdom Death a bit and we also touched on the "Spots the Space Marine" issue as well. Then it just sorta got silly from there!

It's about 90 minutes long, so if you've got a little time, click on over and listen to Episode 4!

Guest Post on The Shell Case

I was recently a guest on the Of Dice and Men podcast and one of the members, Phil who runs The Shell Case, asked me to write up a guest post for his site on a topic of my choosing. With the recent uproar over the actions against "Spots the Space Marine" and the subsequent closing of the Games Workshop HQ Facebook page, it was too current of a topic to ignore.

My very WIP Space M--Marines in Space

  It went up this morning and here's just a bit of it:

With any business/customer dynamic, no matter the context, effective communication is a key part of creating and maintaining a good relationship. But with some of the things Games Workshop has been up to lately, I feel that we’re getting left out in the cold. 

With the announcement that GW has closed its HQ Facebook page to utilize their individual store pages for customer interaction, a frothy response ensued. That coupled with (caused by) the “Spots the Space Marine” debacle really left me scratching my head. On one hand, they look like a child sticking their fingers in their ears while simultaneously coming off as school yard bullies.

To read the rest, go check out Cutting Through the Static over at The Shell Case!

The podcast I was on hasn't been released yet, but when it goes up I will provide a link to it.

Dwarfs and Goblins and Werewolves, Oh My!

Over the last year or so, I've acquired quite the pile of assorted miniatures. Between frequenting my FLGS, getting some as gifts, and being irresistibly addicted to good eBay deals, I ended up with so many that I had to start sticking them all in a box so I wouldn't misplace any. I went to put one more in the box recently and the inevitable happened- the box was full.

Lots of stuff is going on in there.

 So, it was time to start going through to prep and prime as many of them as I could. Some of them are part of my Moria army for LOTR, and they ended up getting finished with that group. But for the most part, these are just single figures. The exception, though, is the small band of Confrontation Wolfen I've been slowly gathering.

Casey and I had talked about playing some Warlord, it's not too many figures and something we could easily play at home together. I started collecting up the Wolfen to use at a Korbolas band. I like the figures Reaper makes for them, but I've been looking for an excuse to buy and paint these Confrontation minis for ages. It's taken me a while to collect enough of them, but through the powers of eBay and generous friends, I've scored enough to start my merry wolfy band.

Now, they're no longer in pieces in the bottom of the box!

I've got another one on the way- one of the reprints Cool Mini has been half-heartedly up to for the last little while. Most of them still need priming, but the two Wolfen with the spears need a little green stuff work first. They didn't have heads when I originally received them, so I had to scare up some replacement ones. I was able to get some legit Rackham bits, but they were for different models so they fit isn't quite right just yet.

Also in the box was my Dweller in the Dark, a couple Ringwraiths, a really cool Reaper mini of a Dwarf riding a giant owl griffon, a Santa Claus dwarf, and several other assorted Dwarfs and dudes. Now that they're all assembled, I can prime them up. Even though I have plenty of other projects going on right now, having these ready-to-paint at any moment will give me a nice little break from the big projects when I need one.

Next on my to-do list is to build up the pile of new Circle Orboros goodies I recently acquired and a little experiment I'm going to try with Forgeworld's Angron. Lots of building, little painting. But I'm getting there. Of course, after them, I still have more Fenrisian wolves to assemble. Then all of that, along with my Helldorado faction and my assembled Orboros guys, have to be painted.

I feel I may be a bit busy over the next month.

WIP Wed: Progress on Moria Goblins

When I did my LOTR movie/painting marathon, I got quite a bit of work done on the goblins. Despite spending nearly the entire duration of the marathon working on them, I did not get them finished. Slow painter is slow.

 But I've made improvement! You wouldn't believe how long my very first squad- ten Chaos Warhounds- took me. I got more done on these goblins in one day than I did in a month with the warhounds. That's partially because since then I've learned what batch painting is (and why it's helpful). I did the 3 parts of the skin, the black leather, and the red cloth on these guys all with batch painting. Goes by faster, but can get a bit dull.

This is my favorite of the goblins- a Prowler

Now, though, it's time to pick them up and finish them off individually. There's some details to pick out, some highlighting to do (plus the obligatory clean up) and then I'm going to give them all a nice wash with some Earthshade to give them that special bit of grime. Nearly finished, I'd say.

I also started my Barrow Wights and Bill the Pony. Bill, being a good guy, obviously isn't part of my army, but we had the blister of him and Sam laying around so I thought I'd work on them. I haven't actually painted a horse before, so he's been interesting. I painted him to match the coloration of the horse that played Bill in the movie- with the sock on his right rear leg and the blaze on his nose (fun fact- my college mascot is a horse named Blaze because of the term for color on their noses).

So far these figures have been fun to paint, but marathon painting them really burned me out on them for a little while. With all the other things sitting around primed on my painting table (more on that later) I should probably finish these guys up before I start anything new. But, you know how easily logical plans like that go right out the window.

LOTR Movie & Painting Marathon

Two weeks ago, I sat down for what used to be an annual tradition of mine- a Lord of the Rings marathon. I always enjoyed doing it but, as happens, life gets in the way and things fall to the wayside. There's been a lot of that happening lately, I've been sick practically since New Year's and work has been nuts. But, now things seem to have finally evened out.

Doing the marathon, though, was a little bit special this time around because I wasn't just watching the movie, I was painting some LOTR figures as well. Hubs and I have had the makings of an army each for quite some time (I chose bad guys, he chose good guys) but neither of us had gotten around to painting them.

I have a Moria and Angmar army, mostly goblins. I got them mostly painted, and started on some Barrow Wights and Dead Marsh Spectres. I did, however, finish up my favorite of the Lord of the Rings models- the Tainted.

I still have to finished the mounted one, but I am really happy with how he turned out. But, being as brilliant as I am, I didn't write down how I did it, so hopefully I can guess/remember when I go to finish the mounted one.

All my hobbying time lately has been taken over by sleeping time, but I'm getting back on the blogging and hobbying horse now. My hands aren't steady enough for painting yet (and coughing all of a sudden isn't conductive to painting) but I have started prepping my Stonehaven Dwarfs. I am really looking forward to working on them after I finish up my Moria army.

Speaking of Stonehaven, they're doing another Kickstarter, this time with Gnomes. These look just as great as the Dwarfs do. I threw down some money for a set. The Dwarfs make an awesome set for RPG characters, and I'm planning to use the Gnomes for the same. Right now, I'm playing an RPG using the Dwarf Druid as my character. It's such a great model. If you're interesting in checking it out, I have a link at the top of my page.