Sunday 24 May 2015

Week 21 - Putting Brush to Plastic

It looks like weekends are starting to free up again, yay! After spending the last couple months with only limited free time I am just starting to get time painting models again. I have a photo of the last 4 dreadball models (technically done last week) and the last Scourge model. As an added bonus I also finished some of my Arcanists for Malifaux. Pictures below.




This means I have finished all of the original Dreadball models, wrapped up my Scourge (so far) and have a good start to my Malifaux. I've been busy unloading stuff on Trademe so have managed to get rid of my Kirai crew and some of my Robotech as well. The Kirai crew no longer played the way I wanted and doesn't fit with the rest of my Malifaux stuff so was easy to let go. The Robotech was surplus to my needs and was easier to move than I expected, a nice bonus.

So I have been pretty lucky that my work earlier in the year has kept me ahead of schedule during this down time. I will keep working on the Arcanists stuff over the next couple weeks but I will have to find another project to focus on pretty soon. Maybe I will finally finish those Elves!

Day 144
179/144 Painted/Days passed
Goals:
Commission models - 10
Finish painting Infinity Morats - 11/11
Paint all DZC Scourge - 32/32
Paint all Directorate - 44/44
Finish all of the Dreadball teams and MVPs. - 4/4
Build and paint remaining KOW Elves - 68/83
Build and paint a full Malifaux crew - 9/16
Build and paint all Deadzone Enforcers - 0/34
Build and paint all Deadzone Plague - 0/21

Sunday 17 May 2015

Week 20 - A Mighty Cave

So I know it has been a little picture (and progress) light around here for a while so just to prove I'm not a complete slacker, here is what I've been doing for the last few weeks.

Not pictured: 2 more that are on bases already...

That is almost all the remaining resin Plague I have. I still have 2 swarms, 2 Terratons and 4 Stage 1s to go, before I even think about the 85 or so zombies... I'm also going to re-purpose some of the Zombicide zombie dogs to act as more 3Ds at some point in the future. I need a whole pile of resin bases to actually finish these guys off though (I only have 13 left at this stage) so most won't see paint for a while. Hopefully soon though!

After my last post I did some thinking and decided that it was time to give up on a couple more of my long term goals. The undead and goblin armies are just far too time consuming to do, despite having most of what I need for both. This has meant that the undead have been listed on TradeMe and the goblin infantry will be following once I gather them all up for a headcount. I will keep the goblin cavalry though, as a cavalry army has appealed to me as well and seem like a good compromise.

I had some time to myself last weekend so started on my next big project, a decent man-cave! True to form I forgot to take a 'before' photo so instead I will just save up for a big reveal once it is done. I aim/hope to have it finished before the end of the year, pending small influxes of cash to pay for it all. I'm going for a classic wood finish and possibly slate coloured walls/ceiling. It should be classy as you can get, complete with an improved gaming table and hopefully TV and sound system, at least eventually. The wood paneling has been started and phase two was assembling a kit-set shed to store all the gardening gear. Unfortunately it was missing part of the gable roof! So now I am waiting to hear back from the supplier as to if/when I can get the part. The delay is a bit frustrating but serves me right for not just going to Bunnings...

Oh, and I got the dip on the last 4 Dreadball figures, they are too wet to photograph though so look for them next week!

Day 137
165/137 Painted/Days passed
Goals:
Commission models - 10
Finish painting Infinity Morats - 11/11
Paint all DZC Scourge - 31/32
Paint all Directorate - 44/44
Build and paint remaining KOW Elves - 68/83
Build and paint all Deadzone Enforcers - 0/34
Build and paint all Deadzone Plague - 0/21
Build and paint a full Malifaux crew - 0/14
Finish all of the Dreadball teams and MVPs. - 0/4

Sunday 3 May 2015

Week 18 - A Productive Weekend

So the Wife and Child decided to go help Grandma sort her house out (as it is going on the market soon-ish) which left me unsupervised for a whole weekend. Brownie point accumulation can really pay off!

I prepared for this by writing out a list of all the things I really wanted to do, hadn't done in ages or really should have done years ago. With Free Comic Book Day on the Saturday I had to get up early, not just for free comics but also Mark Ones only sale in the year. After spending more than I probably should have (see further gripes of "if only I had more money...") I hit up Bunnings for some wood and Spotlight for some fabric. I spent the rest of the day building a tray rack in the garage, enabling me to store most of my models. Unfortunately I didn't have enough money for the side and door for the rack to become a cabinet. Given the number of spiders lurking in the garage I will have to wait until I have those done before migrating my stuff out there. I also busted out the sewing machine and started work on a Grifter mask. During that process I broke my last needle and ran out of the thread I needed. If only I had more money...

Sunday was no less productive but involved much more housework. Having a small child in the house makes housework gradually accumulate, slowly enough that you hardly notice the clean, folded towels have lived on the couch for over a week. I tidied everything up before moving on to finishing the garden frame (see: Things I should have done years ago...) and the front gate (a more recent project). With all the necessary work done I got to spend some time building some Zentradi pods and put the base colours on those last 4 Dreadball models. I hope to get the dip on those in the next couple days to finally finish them off.

Things round here are probably going to slow down even further. The company I work for has been sold, my job is secure but my contract is changing. This impacts my hobby time by having only 30 minutes for lunch instead of an hour, dropping my time to trim models to about 15 minutes. This also impacts the long term goals I have, listed below:

  • Have a large Undead army
  • Have lots of Zombies
  • Have a large Goblin army
  • Have a large Corporation army
  • Have a fleet of Starships
  • Have a Cityscape terrain board
  • Have a Space terrain board

I already have enough undead, zombies and corporation soldiers, I just have to finish them. This will now be more difficult. The starships could be a bit easier now, what with Star Wars Armada now being out. This save me time on assembly and painting so is probably the way I will go. The real problems are the goblins and city table. I have 'some' goblins but certainly not enough and the city table could be very expensive to do outside of Dropzone Commander card terrain sets. These may have to be let go. The space board shouldn't be too bad, I have most of the stuff already and I should be able to use it for several game systems.

With all this going on it makes it kind of difficult to see what I will do for the last 200 models for the year. I think the best solution is to start on the rest of the Zombicide models. I can skip the trimming step and just go straight to painting them, they are quick and easy to do and there are just enough to cover what I have to do for the year. Or that is the plan anyway...

Day 123
165/123 Painted/Days passed
Goals:
Commission models - 10
Finish painting Infinity Morats - 11/11
Paint all DZC Scourge - 31/32
Paint all Directorate - 44/44
Build and paint remaining KOW Elves - 68/83
Build and paint all Deadzone Enforcers - 0/34
Build and paint all Deadzone Plague - 0/21
Build and paint a full Malifaux crew - 0/14
Finish all of the Dreadball teams and MVPs. - 0/4

April Loot Review

For Aprils loot review I received a Loot Crate and the new Marvel Collector Corps box. Pricing structures below:

Collector Corps - $25US/bi-monthly + $20US shipping = ~$60 NZ
Loot Crate - $13.37US/month + $16.52US shipping = ~$41 NZ

The Collector Corps box:


A Thor vs Ultron shirt, 6" Hulkbuster Pop vinyl, Ultron Dorbs vinyl, Avengers comic and a collector corps badge and patch.

The Loot Crate:


A D&D shirt and bow-tie, Harry Potter bag tag, Game of Thrones magnets and USB (4Gb), Princess Bride playing cards, inflatable crown and badge.

Another good Loot Crate, the USB is particularly cool (shame it is only 4Gb though) and the shirt is nice. I haven't got a bow-tie so may as well have a really geeky one. The wife particularly likes the bag tag and I suspect the crown will go down well with my daughter once she is a little older.

The Collector Corps box definitely came out swinging. There is nothing in the box that I don't like and two figures is a good place to start from. The shirt had 3 other possible variants (each with a different hero) but all had the 'fight night' theme so there aren't any serious issues over one being cooler than the others. There is one gripe though, my Hulkbuster has glue marks in several places and a splotch of blue paint on the front (there isn't even any blue used on this figure...) I've looked through some other comments from people who also got the box and this seems to be rather common. My guess is that things got a bit rushed trying to hit the shipping windows so quality control dropped a bit. I'm still happy though and expect that things will be ironed out for the next box.

I've picked up a sub for the new Comic Block out of Nerd Block so look for a review of that later this month. Or early next month, whatever the case may be!

Loot Crate - May theme is Unite
Collector Corps - June is Ant Man (April is still available right now though!)