Hobby Wobble

 Hi!

It's been a busy few days and I find myself having a bit of a hobby wobble. 

This year I've found myself making tons of stuff and generally enjoying the whole process of creating tiny troops, 2mm and 6mm randomness but as we rapidly draw near to the tenth month of 2026, I find myself having a bit of a pause for thought.

I've been sculpting my own figures now for quite a few years but instead of increasing the complexity and skill levels, I seem to be simplifying them for the sake of limited hobby time and to get things done and I have come to the conclusion that maybe I've been making a bit of an error.

Looking back at my older sculpts, they had some real character and personality to them and I was pleased with how they turned out, even if they were a bit rough and ready around the edges. Now I'm making things that are literally basic shapes and I can't help but think that I need to try something a bit more interesting or challenging.

While my sculpting in larger scales lends itself to cartoony and rather stylised figures, I used to have great fun making them and yet here I am churning out tiny and simplistic stuff simply because I just haven't the time to do more and I'm beginning to realise that I need to buck up!

Bloodaxe Boyz - SD style

For the sake of simplicity and speed, I seem to have devolved into very basic figures that do allow me to play games but feel unsatisfying in some way that I can't quite put my finger on. Looking back through the blog, I realise that even my first real attempt at sculpting, a 15mm scale rogue wizard who would later become Marik Goldhelm a notorious denizen of the frontier and sworn nemesis of my Dwarven Boar Company, looks better than the stuff I've been making this year.

Marik Goldhelm

It's a bit perplexing as my Tiny Troops have been pretty popular but I'm beginning to think that I've strayed too far from the sheer enjoyment of making interesting figures into something that's just too simplistic and not really a miniature anymore, more like a token and I'm wondering what I can do to remedy things.

My most recent figures

I realise I'm being a bit daft as it shouldn't really matter but it does and while I'm flailing around trying to settle on something that I can't even define, my projects have suddenly ground to a halt. On the one hand I'm heading to a record for painting figures and I've had a lot of fun doing so, but on the other hand, once they're done, I've not found myself too keen to actually use them in a game and am heading for my worst year's gaming total in some time.

The tiny troops were designed to allow me to quickly make forces to play games and they seem to have done the opposite.

I'm not going to stress myself out over it but I do think that 2027 will need to be a bit of a change with what I'm doing with my hobby and I want to try and focus more on some fun sculpting projects and maybe do something completely different.

I don't know if anyone else has similar moments when you've had a really productive hobby time only to suddenly realise it's not what you'd had in mind but I refuse to have a loss of hobby mojo like I did last year and will keep on with the tiny troop styles for the moment but I think I need to do some sort of palette cleansing exercise to get me back on track...

We shall see what I can come up with but thank you all for reading my ramblings and until then, All the best!

Richard

Charity Shop Finds and Zombies!

 Hi!

I've got a much needed weekend off work and am about to head out to the local farmers market and craft bank in Blairgowrie but wanted to post a quick update!

We were in a local charity shop the other day and I spotted theses mighty tomes for the princely sum of £11.25:

Now I've no real intention of playing either 3rd edition of Age of Sigmar or indeed 9th edition of 40k, but I rather liked the look of them, if for no other reason than to add to my ever growing rulebook collection. 

As an aside, it's fascinating to see how Age of Sigmar has moved from a pamphlet rulebook when it was first released to a 300+ page tome in three editions. I suspect I'll be using elements of the background and factions in future projects and the artwork is pretty good too!

As for 40k, 1st and 2nd edition are the go to for me but I do have a 4th edition rulebook as I'm drawn the the streamlining they did, much like 2nd Edition epic and Epic 40k and at some point I do want to give it a try but that's for another day I think!

Possibly at some point, I would like to collect an army for 1st edition then upgrade it to 2nd edition and finally 4th edition as beyond that, 40k seems to become a sprawling beast with so many rules that I suspect I'll never get my head around, but I do have a more recent tome to add to the mix if I'm feeling bold!

Note: When I was about to post this, I discovered much to my surprise that I had a tag for 8th edition 40k. A quick peruse of said post had me tooting about how it looked really interesting and possibly a return to something a bit closer to my interests so maybe I should have a bit more of a look into 40k 9th edition than I'd initially thought!

In other news, I also picked up a copy of a very old rulebook from ebay in the form of Raven by Harlequin Miniatures!

I had picked up a copy of this in the 90's from Macs Models in Edinburgh and had obsessed over collecting and making armies using it and found the artwork by Pete Knifton to be awesome but the multi-base nature of the rules off-putting for a Warhammer gamer. I'd sold my copy off when I went to university and had a massive clear out so was really happy to add it back to my collection for a couple of quid.

Re-perusing the rules has made me realise it's possibly more suited to smaller scales, either 15mm or even 6mm which I'd not considered at the time and I'm quite intrigued to see how it actually plays. Sadly I've been unable to find any examples of anyone actually playing the game but would love to hear of anyones thoughts about it if they have!

Finally, I've got some more tiny troops made for an upcoming Brutalquest campaign!

Zombies!

Made using my typical beads and EVA foam style they're going to be menacing my adventurers soon. I also made a hulking zombie thing using a number of wooden beads and a bit of EVA foam for details and had great fun slavering it in red paint to give it a suitably gribbly look!

I've already played out the first game and it was a bit more touch and go than I expected and I'll post the battle report in the next day or so and am looking forward to playing game two! 

I do need to make some more art cards and whatnot for my characters which will add to the flavour of things and I should be able to post an update presently with much more detail of what I'm doing.

Hopefully I'll post more shenanigans soon but until then, All the best!

Blogger on the Blink! UPDATED!

 Hi!

Just a quick post this evening to say that Blogger seems to be on the blink a bit at present. My blog reader list isn't updating and it's incredibly irksome as it's usually super handy for seeing what awesome projects others are working on at present. 

For some reason, it's not updated for a week now! I've tried the usual fix of clearing cache's, trying on different browsers, threatening with sticks and so on, but no success.

I don't know if others are having similar issues but hopefully Blogger will fix the shenanigans soon!

Until then, All the best!

UPDATE!

Huzzah! As always, the threat of a good thrashing seems to have worked on blogger/my aging laptop and things seem to be working again.

Gremlin Issues Solved!

Hopefully I'll have a more interesting update to post soon, but until then, All the best once again!!