Painters Progress

Hi!

Well I've had a busy couple of weeks at work, what with getting to be the Gruffalo, Elmer the Elephant and running a slime making workshop but I have managed to keep up the painting progress and finish off some bits and bobs I've had sat half painted or primed for some time!

First up, there's a large carnivorous dinosaur to menace the inhabitants of Farpoints Slime Forests:

 Be vewwy, vewwy qwiet. I'm hunting Cawnosawr!

The model is one of the smaller prepainted hard plastic figures from Schleich and is surprisingly well detailed. I gave him a fresh coat of paint and stuck him on a base and now have something big and nasty to chomp on unsuspecting humans!

Carnosaur Rex

Next up, I've got some new additions to my Badmoon Ork warband in the form of some Gobbo's and a completed second squad of heavy Boyz:

The force thus far

I'm really pleased with the way my Ork force is forming up and 15mm scale suits a decent sized warband for very little money!

 Ork Squad 1

Ork Squad 2

The Orks are a mixture of Alternative Armies (sculpted by me many years ago) and CP models (also sculpted by me!) as well as one or two original sculpts. All the figures are converted to some extent.

Lowly Grots

The Gobbo's are from Ral Partha Europe's Demonworld range and while fantasy miniatures, make fine proxies for sci-fi shenanigans. I have another half dozen to paint of the little chaps and do find them to be very characterful sculpts.

The prodder guys on the left are begging to have some squigs to poke at and I am also thinking of converting a couple to be carrying a demo charge on a stick. Just the thing to add an unexpected bit of mayhem in a game!

Next up, I've got my Battleaxe Brigade mercenaries built up to almost a full squad!

Battleaxe Brigade 

The figures are DP9 from their Heavy Gear range that I picked up six or seven years ago from Wayland Games when they had a sale on. The figures while nice and posable are an utter nightmare to prep. Each figure comes in 8 pieces and the sculpts required a stupid amount of filing and scraping to clear mould lines. Saying that, when painted, they look ace as heavy power armour.

I bulked them up a bit to make it believable that a human could pilot them and converted one to be bareheaded using a Peter Pig cowboy head and painted the first three before we moved last year. The fourth member, got half finished and then stored till I rummaged him out and finished him off this week.

The drones are scratch built from a button, some plasticard, beads and a little bit of Greenstuff and give my heavy power armour a spotter on the left and a gun drone on the right.

Battleaxe Brigade in combat with Imperial retinue forces

I also managed to play another game of my hybrid Song of Blades, renamed Song of Blasters the other day which saw my Imperials battered by the Badmoons. Alas I didn't get any pictures as it was more of a playtest of the rules to see how they worked but the Retinue appeared piecemeal and were shot to pieces by the Orks until the Governor General was left trapped in a small settlement with nothing but his defence droid and handgun.

Amazingly, he proceeded to gun down an entire squad of Ork boyz who tried to capture him, much to my amazement and made his way to safety before the second squad got close enough. He even survived a missile bombardment from the Badmoon's blasta trakk!

Hopefully I'll get some more gubbins painted up in the coming week and possibly even get a game or two in, hopefully with pics!

In the meantime, All the best!

Rumble in the Jungle

Hi!

Well it looks like my decision to return to 15mm sci-fi has borne fruit!

I've spent a few mornings before work repairing some damaged paintwork on my assorted miniatures and giving them a good varnish to stop it happening again and have even managed to play a quick skirmish!

The Governor General has been performing an inspection tour of an Imperial construction project on the edge of the slime forest when a Badmoon warband decided to raid the camp for supplies.

 Imperials and Orks deploy

The game was played over a 2'x2' board with about a dozen or so figures a side in under half an hour using a bit of a bodged version of Song of Blades and Heroes and the Imperials firepower saw off the Orks before they managed to breach the fence line.

I must admit that I really enjoyed the experience and have an idea to re-run it with some more Orks as they needed more numbers, not to mention some bullet shield Gobbo's to soak up incoming fire.

Ork squad on the move

The rules worked surprisingly well, especially when I changed some of the dice mechanics and gave the rules a bit of a reworking to suit my needs and I quite liked the fact that a small skirmish could be played so quickly and satisfyingly in such a short time.

I am feeling the need to expand my forces a bit too as already mentioned to build my Badmoons up to 20-30 models so they act more like the horde they should be and want to add another clan to the mix as I seem to be going through a bit of a yellow and black phase painting wise!

Imperial drone footage  

As I have limited space and hobby time, this small scale battle is just the thing I need and I am very aware of the fact that I can put together a warband in a weekend for the cost of about a fiver which is great!

I'm planning on further tweaking of the rules to make them better suited to what I want to play but have made a decent start to things and look forward to more gaming sessions over the coming weeks.

Imperial defenders stand their ground 

I am also in need of more scenery which I always enjoy building so expect to see some more gubbins soon!

In the meantime, All the best!

Hobby Musings

Hi!

Well I seem to be having a bit of a mixed time of it here at Spacecow Towers. On the one hand, I have been blasting through putting together terrain and working on my SD Somewhere on the Border stuff but seem to be repeatedly hitting a bit of a brick wall when it comes to all things Farpoint.

I spent a bit of time yesterday painting up an Ork for the upcoming Kill Team game that GW are showcasing but found it largely an unrewarding experience. Having started with huge amounts of enthusiasm, the drudgery of simply getting the lumpen piece of plastic painted was almost more than I could bear and the prospect of painting more of them doesn't fill me with enthusiasm.

Again I seem to be stuck with the problem of enjoying painting my own stuff that I make but not commercially available stuff.

Looking back through my blog over the last nine years (hard to believe!), it quickly becomes clear that my most productive and enjoyable experiences have been based around 15mm or SD scales when I can churn out small warbands over a weekend, put together a bit of scenery without hassle and have a blast playing a small skirmish.

For all my handwringing about it, I just don't seem meant for 28mm anymore and need to face facts! With this in mind, I am going to spend a bit of time going through my 15mm scale collection and do some much needed repair work, doubly so as I never varnish my figures so some of them are a bit chipped.

Secondly, I need to get back to sculpting in 15mm scale as it is quite an enjoyable experience and the scale suits my rather stylised approach and it will allow me to put together to sort of forces that I want to see, especially when combined with judicious use of the extensive sci-fi, fantasy and historical ranges out there (take a peek at the Rdunrundt Dragoons below for example. They are actually Peter Pig WW1 French Dragoons but with a bit of a repaint, they are perfectly suited to some pulpy sci-fi shenanigans)

As I mentioned in my previous post, I also really want to get back to playing some games which I managed regularly back when I stuck to 15mm scale but have struggled with since the temptations of 28mm has struck me. 

Looking at the sheer output I managed back then, despite being at either uni, full time work or long commutes I am surprised that I have achieved so little in the last 18 months or so.

Another issue I am becoming increasingly aware of is the lack of space. While I can play a decent game in 15mm on a 2'x2' or 3'x3' board with a few squads and vehicles, attempting anything similar in larger scales is increasingly becoming an exercise in futility as the gubbins I do paint aren't enough for even a decent skirmish and then there's the whole issue of terrain.

Needless to say, one can keep a decent amount of large terrain features for 15mm scale in a shoebox but it's a bit more difficult to do the same in 28mm!

My hobby time is becoming less and less as the years go by and I really want to re-connect with it and if that means taking a step back and re-evaluating what works and what doesn't with the stuff I have, then so be it!

On a related note, I am going to be re-evaluating the assorted SD sculpts I have and continuing to put together small warbands for my own enjoyment as they seem to scratch the itch of a more characterful sculpt that doesn't take long to paint and doesn't need lots of space to play a game!

With that in mind, I am seriously contemplating sculpting some SD characters for a Kill Team campaign like these little Bloodaxe's I sculpted a couple of years back:

It took two weeks to sculpt them and a couple of days to paint them and they were great fun to do as well! I may chunk the newer sculpts up a bit, like the way my Somewhere on the Border stuff is developing but I rather like the characterfulness of them and hope to find an excuse to build and paint some more!

Anyhoo, enough of my rantings and ravings and I think I need to take stock and see what I can put together in the coming week (when I am not at work running the host of events we've got coming up!)

In the meantime, apologies for the ramblings and break in meaningful content. Hopefully with my new enthusiasm coupled with a dose of reality, I will be able to get back to a more interesting read soon!

Kill Team

Hi!

I've been perusing with interest the preview of the new edition of Kill Team by GW and it's looking rather interesting!

Reading through the assorted previews and so on online, it looks like it might be just the cup of tea for me.  It requires small forces (5-10 figures) on a small table (about 2'x3') and features scenario driven games and campaigns that should see a warband develop and is perfect for heavily converting figures.

While I have no way of ever putting together a full army for 40k, I do like the idea of playing something a bit smaller and more rpg-lite so will be keeping an eye out for developments of the game in the coming months. It would be interesting to play out the secret wars of the Inquisition or Imperial agents facing rebel groups or sinister alien cults!

It will be interesting to see what the rules play like and what is possible. I was rather enamoured with Shadow War Armageddon but found it to be a bit limited as I really wanted some Space Marines rather than just scouts and the campaign system was a little limited.

We shall see how things develop in the coming weeks before I make any decision on whether I want to pick it up or not...

Gaming Ponderings

Hi!

I have taken a bit of a break from my painting to ponder the lack of actual gaming I've done over the last 18 months or so.

Back in 2016, I had a burst of gaming shenanigans, playing 6 games in about three weeks but since then, I must admit that I haven't managed to play a single game. Part of this is due to my moving house last year with the need to pack up everything and then unpack stuff for the new flat but work has also played it's part, leaving me knackered when I get home and in no mood to get the miniatures out and get gaming.

The Boar Company versus Orcs

I'm by nature a solo gamer and the thought of joining a gaming club doesn't appeal as most of the people I've played against in the past tend towards either the power gamer or rules lawyer, both of which annoy me no end. Coupled with my gnat like attention span, I find it quite difficult to put together even a small warband for any force, even at skirmish level for the assorted projects I pick up and put down over the course of the year.

Ultramarine Detachment

The result seems to have been a dramatic drop off in any games I play. Back in my high school days, I'd play at least a couple of games of 2nd edition 40k a month and even at uni I'd manage to play out entire skirmish campaigns featuring my Stainless Steel Rat project but lately I seem to be dropping away from it all and I'm not too pleased about it!

Part of the issue is that I still haven't had chance to get my gaming table put together in the new flat as it's languishing in our library under an assortment of stuff that still needs sorting out but I think another issue may be my move back to 28mm.

Judges deal with a hostage situation on Farpoint

I seem to be spending an awful lot of time painting stuff only for it to sit on a shelf while my smaller scale stuff would regularly see action.

With this in mind, I have been perusing my Somewhere on the Border blog as I've returned to sculpting my SD scale figures and am really finding the experience rewarding and enjoyable and with a bit of work already have two decent sized skirmish warbands put together and completed with two more in various stages of completion.

 Boar Company versus Marik Goldhelm's villains

I seem to have found my niche that ticks all the boxes for me. The scale is fine, with the miniatures being large enough to have character but still small enough to get a decent game in on a 3'x3' board. Sculpting and painting my own stuff has also proved most rewarding too and while it's a slower process than just unpacking stuff from it's blister pack and cracking on with painting, it is far more enjoyable.

Adventurers disturb a Fire Grub burrow

While they may not be everyone's cup of tea, I find myself drawn more towards such a personal project than much of the stuff that resulted in my painting malaise of earlier this year and suspect that the little chaps are going to be the focus of my hobby for the foreseeable future.

While GW has been sorely tempting me with lots of fantastic stuff, my frustrations at not being able to paint stuff to the standard I want and the detail that the rather fab sculpting demands, these chunky little guys I sculpt myself with their faults, flaws but still a charming character of their own are giving me more enjoyment to work on.

I'm going to try and concentrate on sculpting and painting enough stuff to start a mini skirmish campaign and we shall see if I can't get out of the gaming doldrums!

Sadly this will result in a bit of a drop off in content on Tales From Farpoint but it can't be helped and maybe the resulting activity on Somewhere on the Border will spur me onto more classic stuff as I do still hold out the real wish to put together a 2nd edition 40k army using the new miniatures from GW.

Classic 40k!

This is a project I've been touching on for absolutely ages now and something I seem to put off time and time again for various reasons so maybe a bit of a break into my own stuff will give me the inspiration I need to really take a look at the possibility of actually making a go at one of the main reasons I put this blog together in the first place!

Anyhoo, I seem to have digressed off again and apologies for all the ramblings!

Hopefully I will manage to get myself organised enough to play the mini campaign for Somewhere on the Border and get inspired by some 40k goodness too!

In the meantime, All the best!

Project Fyreslayer Part 4

Hi!

Huzzah! I've managed to finish the third Fyreslayer from my skirmish warband that is slowly coming together!

Vulcite Berzerkers

With the third of the berzerkers, I went for a slightly darker beard colour and am somewhat unsure about it but am glad to have finished the little chap.

I also reworked the bases as looking at the old pictures, there was too much tan going on which made the figures look a bit bland, which was quite the achievement for orange bearded and mohawked Dwarves toting big axes and a ton of gold. The newer bases look miles better and were a bit more thematic than the more traditional brown.

 Shield Detail

I must admit that I am quite pleased to have broken the halfway mark with the project as it's been a while since I have managed to be quite so constructive and at the rate I am going, I may even finish the mini project in the coming couple of weeks!

I'm now pondering what to do in the coming months, especially as GW has been releasing so many great Easy Build kits which are just the thing for my skirmish project and I may find myself tempted to pick up some Stormcast Eternals as I quite like the chunky figures.

Three Furious Members of The Band of the Blessed

I think I'll be spending a bit of time this morning putting the fourth member of the party together and I'm sorely tempted to try a bit more conversion work on the chap but we shall see what we can do!

In the meantime, All the best!

Terrain Making

Hi!

I seem to be taking a mini break from finishing the third of my Fyreslayers and have been spending a bit of time mucking around with some terrain for my Somewhere on the Border project.

More information and pics can be found over on SOMEWHERE ON THE BORDER. I'm also feeling the need to do some sculpting as a break from the detail work required for GW plastics so once I have the third slayer finished, I am going to be working on an assortment of bits and bobs that I have been thinking about doing for a while.

All the best!