Flames of War Pershings

With my summer holiday over it's time to be more active in the hobby field again. A month away from work was definitely needed as I was really starting to feel fairly burnt out and frustrated about everything. Couple of weeks in Canada and a few weeks back home spending time with friends, going out, watching movies etc. really did a lot to help bring back some long lost motivation for work, and for painting as well. I've been back to work and a normal routine for about a week now and painting has actually been really enjoyable for the first time in a long while.

First up are some more additions to my Flames of War US forces in the form of a Pershing platoon. A late war entry these didn't really reach troops until the final months of the war and even then only in small numbers. Still it's an iconic tank that saw much use in Korea and formed the basis of further US armor development into the Patton series, so I had to have some. From gaming point of view these are pretty bad to be honest. They are very expensive points wise in Flames of War, but still pretty vulnerable to larger late war AT guns. Fielding more than 3 is nigh impossible and they aren't too survivable then.  Still fun to field every once in a while for a themed list.

These guys were nearly done before I left for Canada, but with the mud effects taking hours to dry they weren't quite finished in time for that. Still it was a good way to start getting back to painting by just slopping on some finishing touches and varnish to get these guys ready.

I followed my normal recipe for US vehicles with a suitable green basecoat with dark yellow modulation. Some chipping and enamel washes for weathering followed by liberal coats of mud. Still haven't really fully figured out the Ammo of Mig mud products that I've started to transition to. They feel a bit too liquid to me and don't really have much texture so building thick coats of mud seems tricky. They've nowadays come out with some thicker stuff as well, so might have to give it a try or then try to mix in some very fine sand to add more texture and grit to the ones I already have.

Aside from the Pershings I've finally received my Skaven Blood Bowl team from a Willy Miniatures Kickstarter and been putting them together. I'd opted for a Deluxe box which included a pitch and transportation foam. After some mishaps those who did so ended up receiving their stuff about three months after everyone else. If I'd known before hand I would have just taken the minis, but originally everything was supposed to ship at the same time.

Alongside Skaven I've been continuing on the next Chaos Space Marine squad. Most of the time consuming work is finished with all the details picked out and the tedious edge highlighting done. I've still got decals to apply and chipping to add before a final panel line wash to make those pop out better. I probably should have gone for a slightly faster scheme to paint, but I do enjoy the look so maybe it's worth the extra time. Hoping to finish them of within a week or so, though a friends wedding this weekend will reduce available hobby time quite a bit.

From a hobby point of view it's forming up to be quite a busy autumn. We have a Flames of War escalation league starting to get new players in and for us older players to start new armies. Also a Shadow Wars Armageddon campaign starting which I was planning to take part in. And finally we are planning to start our 1813 Napoleonics campaign that we'd originally already planned for 2016. So there should be plenty of gaming and painting ahead and hopefully I'll be a bit more active updating the blog as well.

Chaos Decimator

Back to 40k and blogging! Painting has still been slow with computer games like Steel Division and Battlegrounds taking much of my free time lately. But with the 8th edition of 40k coming out and massive hype at my club and online it's really rekindled my interest for my Alpha Legion project so I dug them up and continued from where I left previously!

I started by continuing on the Rhino which was left in a WIP state previously, but like last time I wasn't completely sure about the aesthetics that I went for. Originally I thought a rust base coat and chipping fluids would be a cool idea, but now the vehicle just feels too 'messy' compared to how the rest look. So I put it aside until I figured what to do with it. I hate removing paint, but with an airbrush job covering some of the chipped areas will be a pain in the ass. Luckily most of them are on the lower areas and will be covered by mud anyways, but I'll let that simmer for a while until I get  some inspiration.

So with the Rhino pushed out of the way I went for what is probably my favorite Daemon Engine, the Decimator. It's like a massive mean version of a regular dreadnought that really looks chaotic, but doesn't go overboard like some of the funkier dinobots. Like many Forge World models, fit wasn't always perfect and it was extremely fiddly to put together as it's really top heavy and connection points were tiny. Plenty of pinning and green stuff helped though and now it feels pretty sturdy.

I was thinking about different variations on the green accents with more realistic highlights, random splotches etc. but just ended up going with highlighting panel lines and corners. Outside of that it was a fairly simple job of painting all the steel areas, picking out some cables in different colours and highlighting the demonic features on his armor. I added some dusting and rust effects with pigments, but didn't want to go overboard so left it pretty light. Likewise the base was kept simple, partly not to take too much away from the model and in part, because there  really isn't much room even on a 60mm base as the model really is that huge.

Outside of that I started applying paint on another squad. All the airbrush work is now done, next up it's all the steel pieces and then some edge highlights. That will have to wait a few weeks though, as I'm starting my summer holiday in a few days with a trip to Canada to visit my parents and tour Quebec for a little over a week. Might squeeze in a bit of hobby time before my departure, but that will probably go into some nearly finished Flames of War things. After the trip I'm going to try to get back to more regular painting and blogging, but we'll see how I'm feeling after a short holiday period.

Dropfleet Commander PHR

Last batch of PHR ships for Dropfleet Commander, at least for a while. I've still got one starter fleet left, but I'm leaving that for until I've gotten more games in and a better feel for how I want my fleet to work. I've already got more than I'll ever use in a single game, so just need to figure out what kind of ships I want more.

Got these done a couple of weeks ago for a game at the club, but took my sweet time taking photos and putting them up here. Painted here is one of the two PHR battleships, Heracles, some corvettes and four support frigates in the form of two Calypsos and two Andromedas.

The battleships are some of the newer additions to the game and only came out a few months ago. I ordered mine straight away, but unfortunately it arrived with some parts missing which lead to a few more weeks of waiting until I got the items from Hawk. With them still being somewhat overwhelmed with Kickstarter issues it took some time to get replacements, but in the end I have the missing fins and a complete ship. The quality is a bit mixed with the body showing the layers from 3D printing that was used to make the master. Still nothing too bad and a light sanding followed by a heavier basecoat on the affected areas fixed everything.

The resin Corvettes on the other hand were excellent with a super smooth finish and no apparent flash or parting lines. Hopefully when the old moulds wear out on the battleships they'll redo them with a better finish on the master model.

Heracles

Calypso

Andromeda

 Echo

 
Finally I dug out all my current PHR ships. There's surprisingly many now that they are out of the storage box. Can't even fit them on my regular photo backdrop :) Next up for Dropfleet is an UCM fleet, I've put most together and I'm only really waiting for a few online only limited edition light cruisers to arrive and I'm all set for a large fleet. When I'm done with that I need to start running some demos at the club as there's only a few guys playing at the moment and new opponents certainly wouldn't hurt!

Looking for my painting mojo

As is probably apparent from the silence in my blog I haven't really been interested in doing any painting for a while. My rush to the finish line in the painting challenge was bit of a dud with plenty of things on the table, but I just couldn't get anything finished up. Those have now been pushed aside to wait for some inspiration to finish them at some point.

Lack of painting mojo isn't anything new though as frankly I haven't really felt super interested in painting anything since last summer or autumn. I have periods where it's fun to paint up things, but I just can't bring myself to crank out unit after unit of minis in similar garb. At times painting yet another Napoleonic unit or some more WW2 stuff seems too much like a job. This does tend to cause some issues as the games I like the most tend to require quite a lot of minis with an average Napoleonic division coming at around 200-300 15mm minis in our games for example.

Interestingly the thing I'm disliking the most at the moment is painting with a brush. Airbrushing is still ton's of fun, but somehow when I need to go in and pick out details to finalize stuff all motivation goes out the door.

Even though I can't get myself painting, it doesn't mean I've abandoned other aspects of the hobby. I've actually been playing quite a lot lately with version 4 of Flames of War being a ton of fun despite some of the oddities and rules that I disagree with. The old edition and lists were starting to be boring and this really brings a fresh way to play the game without making it too different from the previous editions. Dropfleet has also been fun to play as well as all the different board games that I've gone back to.

So with a plenty of gaming and other activities I'm slowly trying to find my painting mojo again. One thing that I'm not going to do is trying to force myself into painting any larger projects for a while as that's really killed my interest in brushwork. I'm only painting whatever seems cool at the moment and not stressing about even getting it finished. Last weekend was quite fun with some airbrush work on additions to my Dropfleet army as well as on a Chaos Rhino that I'd built up last summer and started on by airbrushing a base layer of different rust shades. I tested a some chipping products from Ammo of Mig that allow you to paint over a previous layer and by wetting it again you can scratch of some of the top layers. Worked out quite nicely and now the Rhino is waiting for some detail and decal work before I can get to washes.

My mancave has also got a bit more furniture and it's starting to look more like what I want it to be. Another desk was bought for the PC so that I don't have to cram everything onto one desk. Some storage solutions for books etc. were also added which aren't really visible in the picture. Finally I bought some more paint racks from Warbases as well as new paint from a  newish brand called Warcolours. Haven't had time to test them out properly yet, but from the test pieces I did they really seem very promising! Not ideal for historicals, but strong vibrant colours and a nice 5 shade colour setup that should prove great for fantasy and scifi stuff.

With that rant out of the way  I'm off to celebrate easter. My parents are visiting Finland for a week so some time will be sent with them as well as the in-laws. Nice to have a four day weekend after a few weeks of working 10-12 hour days.