I agreed to what?   That doesn't sound like me at all.......

So starting Sunday I am in a 4 way painting challenge with; Darren (Skaven), Nick (Orcs) & Carmin (Chaos) to see who can get 50 trooper models done first.

I always think these painting bets are a good idea and then I line up 50 models infront of myself and do a double take.  Oh well, nothing ventured, nothing gainned.

So today I've got my 52 Light Infantry cleaned and glued into their bases and I'll be black priming them tomorrow in preparation for starting painting on Sunday.

I'm actually super-excited about getting these figures done as they have been sitting in my basement waiting patiently for paint for well over 3 years now.  Hopefully after I get them all done I can find a game to use them in.

Tomorrow I will post my first month end summary of what got completed in the hobby for January.

-Jay

Ready for priming....I'm trying to remember how long I've been using that same Pizza Pizza box for....

 

First 2 test models done!  Would you like to know more?

This Friday I begin my newest painting bet with Darren and Carmin; the first one of us to complete 50 troop models wins and the 2 losers have to paint a figure for the winner.

My plan as I mentionned in a previous entry is to paint 52 Starship Troopers Light Infantry Troopers.  I wanted to sort out how I would be using my paints before hand so I primed up 4 figures and tried a variety of ways of achieving the look of the troopers in the movie and in the end I'm happy with what I ended up with.  Now the real question is can I get all 52 of them before Darren and his cheater dip paint a huge block of Skaven?  I'd trash talk Carmin as well but I'm not sure what he's painting yet.

-Jay

Basic easy to paint sci-fi troopers

 

I like donuts...so what?!?!

A couple of years ago I bought a bunch of stuff from Hasslefree Miniatures (every single figure is/was AWESOME by the way) and when you're placing an order for an assortment of figures you always end up buying one or two you're not really sure you need but you plan on finding a use for anyway.  One of the figures I got is clearly meant to be Simon Pegg's partner from Hot Fuzz.  The figure is pretty cool but the british policemen's helmet (sorry I'm not sure what the proper name is) didn't fit very well into my mid-western american police force.

At some point after buying it I apparently (I had totally forgotten) did a head swap to make the figure more useable with the rest of my collection and now he's ready to help defend the citizens of Anytown USA against the zombie hordes.

And I do have to admit for any of you who don't know me personally with the hair, the glasses and the....um...physique this fig looks to me like a pretty decent representation of yours truly as a police officer.

"The zombies have overrun Tim Hortons!"

 

Nick Furious!

I decided to take a break from full-on painting today to do another Clix touch-up.  Fixing up that SHIELD agent the other day got me to thinking about more figs I could use in survival (as opposed to superhero) games and again the Avengers Movie Heroclix had a perfect figure for the task; Nick Fury.

There have been a ton of Nick Fury figures in the Heroclix line over the years but even their first pass at Ultimate Nick Fury still looked like it wouldn't fit in the real world (he's posed firing an AR-15 with 1 hand).  However I thought the Avengers Movie Nick Fury was perfect as an action hero/survivor sort of figure.  With his black tactical gear and black coat he's the epitome of cool and he looks like he'd be at home in any near future setting.

-Jay

Just dial 1-800-FURIOUS

 

Tactical Miniatures Beat Cops done!

Tonight I finished my last 2 cops from my Tactical Minaitures pack.  I have to say these are great figs, I wish the company had thrived and managed to produce more models but these things happen I suppose.

So all told that pack contributed 2 cops with pistols, 2 with shotgun and 1 with an assault rifle to my collection of figures to act out the opening animation of the Resident Evil 3 video game.

My next addition to the police will be a minor conversion of a Hasslefree figure I got a couple of years ago.

-Jay

"Stop in the name of the law!"

 

A more even tempered looking officer.

 

 

 

Two more for the R.P.D.

I managed to finish 2 more of my new R.P.D. officers last night.  I've still got 2 more armed with shotguns to paint, hopefully they will be finished tomorrow.

I'm really liking how this Fenrisian Grey looks for their shirts so I think I may got back and repaint the Hasslefree cops I did when I first started the blog.  When this latest batch of cops is done I'll probably get back to work on the next batch of zombies from Studio Miniatures as well.  It looks like I'm back in a zombie kind of mood!

-Jay

Ready!  Aim!  Fire!

 

I think this guy means business.

 

 

Send more cops!

I'm working on a pack of 5 police officers from Tactical Miniatures to use in my zombie gaming.

This first figure was basically a test to see how a few new paints worked out before painting the rest of the pack.  The trousers are painted Coal Black (P3) while the new colours are the shirt being Fenrisian Grey (GW) and the duty gear being Skavenblight Dinge (GW).  I'm pretty happy with how this guy turned out so I think I'll try to finish the rest of the pack tonight.

Incidentally Tactical Miniatures went out of business over a year ago but Armorcast has acquired the rights to produce their models.

-Jay

Aim for the head!

 

The professional

Today is yet another Heroclix repaint.  This time not a superhero or a civilian but something in between.

Today's figure is a re-painted/touched up agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. from the Avengers Movie set of Heroclix figures that was released awhile back.  The figure was mostly just touched up with the skin and gun being completely repainted and a S.H.I.E.L.D. emblem on the figure's upper arm being painted over (I don't think most people in the military or law-enforcement wear unit patches on their suit jackets).

He may stand in as an agent of Checkmate (or I.O.) in my DC Adventures game and again he will also make a useful figure in some other games as well.

-Jay

Just add shades for Men-In-Black version!



Post-script.
One of the things a friend of mine mentionned to me a couple of years ago that I had forgotten was that macro-photography really shows off the details and the flaws in your minitures.  It wasn't until I looked at this picture on my laptop I realized how bad the "googly-eye" was on this guy.  When I do my summary post at the end of the month (as per Justin's request) you'll see I have since fixed the eye.

That's "Doctor" Bystander to you!

Today I added another civilain to my collection for DC Adventures although as a sort of generic looking guy in a lab coat I suspect at some point he'll do double duty in a zombie game as well.

The figure is a Heroclix Hank Pym (Ant-Man, Giant Man, Goliath, Yellowjacket & The Wasp) from the most recenet Avengers set.  Basically I touched him up in a few areas and re-painted his skin and facial details and he's ready to rock.

Hopefully I'll have a game of DC Adventures to fill everybody in on within the next week or two.

-Jay

The doctor will see you now.

 

Fall Of The Necromancer Scenario 2: In The Nick Of Time

After multiple delays Stan and I finally got down to playing the second scenario of the Fall Of The Necromancer campaign.

In the second scenario the forces of the necromancer are on the offensive against the elves of Mirkwood while the forces of Elrond half-elven rush to their aid.  Will the wood elves hold out?  Will Elrond's forces arrive in-time?  Will I remember to use the Sentinels special abilities before the thrid turn?  Let`s find out.....

Turn 1
The basic deployment is Wood Elves set up within 12" of the northern table edge, the Necromancer`s forces set up in the middle of the table and the forces of Elrond advancing in from the southern board edge.  The goal is to knock the oppoenents force below 25% of it's starting model count.

The forces of darkness advance on the Wood Elves



Turn 2
I started off by being very aggresive with my Sentinels, immediately running one of Stan`s giant spiders off the table.  Unfortunately this did a great job of reminding Stan to kill my Sentinels as quickly as possible a task he set to with immediate effect.  As painful as the loss of my Sentinels was in the early turns Stan's biggest offensive punch came from his Wargs.

Trust me there were alot more elves in this area before this picture was taken



Turns 3-4
I was racking up a decent body count with my elven soldiers but inspite of using 2 heroics charges (a new mechanic in The Hobbit edition of Lord Of The Rings) Elrond was still taking his sweet time getting to the fight.  Stan and I were running pretty much even for casualties which meant I was going to run out of troops before he did.

Khamul The Easterling protected by his elite bodyguard of pincushions

 

 

Turn 5



Thranduil was doing a great job of holding off the orc horde almost single-handedly which almost made up for the terrible rolls I was getting from Legolas.  During his advance across the table Elrond had has his stores of might, will, fate and wounds sorely drainned and it looked like he was not going to turn out to be the saviour of Mirkwood after all.

Thranduil`s (second) last stand



Turn 6
After fighting off a half-dozen members of Stan`s army completely unsupported for 3 turns Thranduil finally fell.  In the meantime Khamul had gotten so tired of waiting for Elrond to show up that he sent some of his faster moving forces to engage him directly.  In his weakend state Elrond was no match for the monsters of Dol Guldur and after fending them off for one turn he too was laid low.

Thanks for coming Elrond...next time ride a horse or something!

 

 

Conclusions



Another fantastic game, this time I came out on the short end.  In hindsight I would key on 2 gross tactical errors I made that I never truly recovered from.
The first-I should have rushed the Wood Elves up (even though it would have cost me more casualties the first 2 turns) to hold the bad guys in the center of the table.  It would have meant taking alot more damage early on but would have put me in a much better position to engage with Elrond`s forces sooner.
The second-I have alot more experience playing the bad guys in LOTR than the elves and the thing I kept forgetting is that while advancing across the table if I had put my spearmen in front becuase they are equipped with shields they actually have a higher defence rating than my sword armed elves.

Oh well live and learn.  The important thing is that I had a great time playing and I look forward to my next game against Stan and his....wait....Castellans Of Dol Guldur....that can`t be good...

-Jay

Is he the hero Gotham needs, or the hero Gotham deserves?

So today on Facebook I posted the idea that in The Dark Knight Rises the only thing that defines the fact that Bane is the villain is that Bane kills people and Batman does not.  Obviously I was mostly just joking but then I got to thinking about it.....and here's my score card (based only on The Dark Knight Rises):

BATMAN-helps a criminal escape from doing prison-time in exchange for sexy-time.
BANE-helps a young girl escape from  prison she did nothing to end up in in exhange for a beating from his fellow prisoners.
BATMAN-uses terror to motivate the criminals of Gotham into behaving themselves.
BANE-uses terror to motivate the citizens of Gotham into living free (sort of).
BATMAN-builds a secret nuclear reactor under Gotham city unbeknownst to the authorities or any nuclear regulatory agency.
BANE-weaponizes nuclear reactor, takes it on a bus tour of the city.
BATMAN-in collusion with Jim Gordon passes draconian crime bill under false pretenses to rob the accused of their due process.
BANE-in collusion with the Batmobile liberates the questionably imprisonned from Batman's gulag.

Now obviously (I hope obviously) this is a very tongue-in-cheek comparison of the 2 characters but it got me thinking back to Batman's closing dialogue from the previous movie which is far too convoluted for me to quote word-for-word about 'not being the hero Gotham wants, but being the hero Gotham needs, etc, etc'.

So without further ado, I present to you Gotham City's PERFECT crime-fighting hero!

-Jay

Bat-Bane!

 

Dwalin & Balin

Back to the dwarves!  I took a break from; dark grey, dark blue and black to paint some of the more brightly coloured members of Thorin's Company this week.

I liked both of these figures for completely different reasons.  Balin was great because I got him done in under an hour which made me feel like I was getting my painting-legs back under me again and Dwalin was fantastic because he is simultaneously a cool character in LOTR but also looks like exactly the dwarf miniature I always wanted for roleplaying.

I now have 5 of the 13 dwarves of Thorin's Company done as well as Bilbo and Gandalf.  This week I'm finally playing my long awaited and repeatedly delayed second game of Fall Of The Necromancer so that coupled with the fact that Tuesday night/Wednesday morning look like they may be spent watch Dredd 3D again means the dwarves will probably be moving to the back-burner for a week.

By the way.   For anyone watching The Hobbit and thinking "I don't remember that from the book" alot of it ties in nicely with Fall Of The Necromancer so if you can lay your hands on a copy I highly recommend it!

-Jay

Balin & Dwalin

 

Yet another source for Space Cops (atleast 1 space cop)

In my never ending goal to bring order to an assortment of dark futures I've collected alot of different space cop forces (Judges, Arbites, Enforcers, etc) but in almost every case those figure ranges tend to be smaller than normal for an "army" sized game.  This frequently leads to looking about through other ranges for figures that look like they fit in to fill rolls not already represented by miniatures.

As I've been working on my new Enforcers I've gone through my older figures looking for figs I had aquired with the intention of integrating them into my collection.  A few years ago there were a number of  fan written lists for Arbites armies in 40K and one of the character options that kept turning up was a Detective or Inspector of some sort.

The old VOID miniature range had alot of excellent models (I highly recomend checking it out if you're looking for sci-fi RPG figures) and one of them seemed perfectly suited to what I needed.  She's more lightly armoured than the main Arbites/Enforcer figures and her armour and bodysuit look a little more advanced than Imperial technology but I definitely think she works and until my conversion skills improve substantially she's as close as I'll get to a Shira Calpurnia miniature.

Oh, and don't forget; Dredd is out on Blu-Ray and DVD in 4 more days :)

-Jay

A futuristic female cop who DOESN'T look like Cassandra Anderson

 

Would you like to know more?

At the beginning of February I'll be kicking off my latest painting bet with Darren.  It will be a race to see whether he can finish 50 Skaven before I can finish 50 Light Mobile Infantry.  We're also looking to corral a few others into joining us but the basic gist of our challenge this time around is; first person to complete 50 trooper models after the starting gun goes off wins.

I've decided to do the Light Mobile Infantry because I bought them years ago and just never got around to doing them because the Starship Troopers game just never caught on with any of my gaming groups.  Having said that I still really like the models and think they make excellent generic sci-fi infantry for any setting or system (does anybody remember the episode 'The Train Job' from Firefly?)

The true goal for me will be to complete nine ten-man squads.  So during the ramp up to the actually painting-bet I will be painting a few test models as well as hopefully getting some of the support (leaders, snipers, radio-men, etc) models done so that the big batch represents the end rather than the beginning of my goal.

Wish me luck!

-Jay

Test models

 

Another civilian joins the fray.

Last night I finished another touched-up Heroclix model to add to my growing pile of civilian models for modern gaming.

The thing that is great about this figure is also somewhat ironic; in my opinion it's a very poorly executed version of the character it is intended to be and therefore makes a perfect "generic" civilian model.  Can any of you who aren't familiar with the Heroclix range (and without using your Google-fu) tell me which DC or Marvel character this figure is meant to represent?

My progress on a number of projects contiunes on slowly and steadily.  And it looks like I may kick off February with an extremely random (and long overdue) batch of sci-fi miniature painting for my latest painting bet with my arch-nemesis Darren.

Onward and upward!

-Jay

Her superpower is handing you large sheets of paper.

 

The Hobbit: Fili & Kili

Today's addition to Thorin's company are the dwarf brothers Fili & Kili.  I'm intending to work through the dwarves from The Hobbit in pairs and these two seemed like a great jumping off point.  They are attired in similar colours so it was a fairly simple thing to paint them together and they also make logical start to the troops if I play a small game given their disposition as Thorin's bodyguards.

Next up are Dwalin & Balin as I'm hoping to brighten up what has so far been a fairly somber looking collection of dwarves.

-Jay

Fili & Kili (is it just me or does Kili look like Aragorn Jr?)