Hellish giftmas

Merry retrolicious leadmas my little Gelfling stabbers.
This year I managed to once again not finish my Christmas specials.  At least I am being traditional.   This year it is Reaper minis excellent Xmas Sophie who stopped shortly after basic washes.  Oh, but I did manage to sculpt up a matching rickety wooden base for Citadel's Sanity Claws from last year.
Next year I plan to not complete some xmas mouslings... and maybe a Christmas dwarf if I can find a nice cheap one.

One last act of xmas spirit had me assemble a Chaos Dwarf Hellcannon that I got for Christmas last year.  Finelycast?  Nope... it was so warped I could barely get it together.  I have done enough resin casting to tell this was untimely ripped from it's mold- the central cannon pivot support holes had collapsed in on themselves.  I used a hairdryer to kinda sorta fix it but once again I am reminded that this is a super expensive, inferior product.  Quality control be damned.

I felt better that I managed to assemble one more of my xmas presents... but it is kinda embarrassing how many I have yet to even get out their boxes.  I have two chaos mounted champions, three chaos characters, a box of hellstriders, dark eldar,a box of chaos knights, skaven, trolls and some plastic human millitia.  Yikes.  I better dedicate some gluey time next year.

How bad is your haul pile from previous years?  Go on... be honest.

Oh... I also tacked on another photo of some of my JB style chaos for you.

Limited Edition Sanity Claws (Citadel) and Limited Edition Xmas Sophie (Reaper)

Three Chaos Spawn walk into a bar.  The bar clears out.  All custom conversions.

Basing. Always more basing. And a spawn.

Tonight was a fabulous frenzy of basing.  A lot of my figures are on 3mm thick mdf bases, whilst my newer figures are on 1.8 or 2mm thick low profile bases, which I prefer.  A big assed packing knife and sandpaper, a little thinned weldbond pva glue to seal the bottoms (and stop them pilling) and a fresh paint job here and there, and a whole slew of minis where rendered a bit gooderer.

I had a couple of tubs of minis that I had been putting off because of this, but now I have the technique of shaving the bases down to an art, and the fact they where quick to paint- they lept up the paint queue to tonight.

Among these where early citadel dire wolves and hogs, a host of farmyard animals from Megaminis and Hasslefrees excellent baby maws... (perfect little buggers for slaanesh warbands- I must get more of these and some adults too!) Oh... and dogs.
Lots of dogs.
Why I have so many I really don't know... blink dogs, ratter from citadels rare villagers set, more megaminis, chaos hounds and armored war dogs from Ral Partha.  Strangely I do not think this is enough though, as I felt the urge to start putting these on the bases with their masters.

Oh, and I rebased the chaos dogzoat spawn to a large renedra round base to give him an epic feel and protect his wings in gameplay.

I figured I would leave you with a picture... here is one of the whacky chaos spawn I threw together after Steve posted all those lovely John Blanche pictures a while ago.  I noticed a huge mold line on the arm so I will have to address that before I continue.  I think he needs a stupidly sized, moss covered banner ala 80's blanche.

So that's my night.  Yawn.  G'night all.

Ed's first founding.

So last night my brush was tickling some spess mareenz for by brother in law's founding chapter project.  Yep, I have to tackle one of each.  Apparently there are twenty of the bastards.
Ed has been handing me marines in a steady stream and I have been dutifully setting them aside until The Emperor grants me the willpower to paint them.

The thought occurred to me that I have lost track of the number of space Marines I have painted over the years.  It's Become reflexive.  The challenge is not falling asleep.

But here is one for the fanboyz.  I will track down and personally bitch slap anyone who points out that color scheme x is not accurate according to codex Y.  Seriously,  I DON'T CARE.

These guys are mostly done, with insignia and other details remaining, a cloak on the blue dude... and whatnot.  I am no expert, but I also suspect the ultramarine needs a head.  A testament to Ed's delicate take on gluing.   I will let him pick out which of the numerous parts that have fallen off belongs to him.

Aaaaaand with all great modern GW tasks I absolutely had to do an old school Rogue Trader mini to keep sane.  And what a mini... one of the numerous Space Orks from the boxed set.  As you may remember,  I vowed to not collect RT space orks.

Naturally that means I have ten or so and a couple of dreadnoughts.

What a joy!  I decided to go full Rogue Trader tabletop style on them- going right back to their first appearance in WD98 (I think) with strong contrast, titillating pink lips and rich greens.  Quite a different style than my normal muted blends, but satisfying and glorious on the gaming table.

And finally a little 1980's pop culture D&D reference.  First one to get what is cool about this color scheme on a roper gets to act smug all week.

Orcs! Lots of Orcs!

'Ere yer go.  An earlee wurk in progress... me greenies... cor lookat 'em all.  Dems boyz gettin' reddy for Waaaahhhggg.

*cough*  gosh I say, orcish is just too much like being back in essex.  Innit.

So... er... cobber...  I decided it would be nice to get as many of my orcs out for a family photo.  This is the first time they are all together.   Obviously they are all in various states of unfinished- some nary out of their undercoat- but I figured you may like to see them.  Imagine them all painted up lovely.  Cooorrrr.

So with a few days left to giftmas I probably should focus on my giftmas sophie from reaper- or, you know,  base and varnish cthulu santa from last year.  But hmmmm... maybe someone can give me some 'arsed' for giftmas because right now I just can't be.

Slaanesh warband 2

Though very tired today I did manage to push some more figures further along the paint queue this evening.  I am mentally exhausted, but soldiering on with tasks will help recovery.  So...

I added chaos thugs to the mix, finally slapping paint on figures I have had under coated for years.  No real shading to speak of yet, but the little army is starting to appear in crude form.

I also finished two Ral Partha Golems... finally completing the set of four.  I have to dig out the clay and flesh ones for a family photo.  Sadly these two are on the endangered species list.  Ral Partha destroyed their molds during the Fasa takeover.  I have tried contacting wizards of the coast to get the rights to recast all these lost lines but to response.

Slaanesh Warband

Howdy doodie, duderinos.  The waves of figures on my desk have yet to destroy me.  A few more near completion.  Mushroom bases, a bit more touches of color and edging, then varnished and done!

Here I give you my new Slaanesh members.  I decided that pastels don't really say hardcore spank as much as shiney red and black leather.  So I give you my deviant palette.

The Daemondog ("young girl... they call them the Daemondogs".. Bowie anyone?) previously shown has her slap on now for the most part.

The Demonettes (fuck the bullshit 'a's) got classic paint schemes based on their first appearance in white dwarf- courtesy of Phil Lewis and John Blanche.

More as I churn, churn, churn.

More progress

A few hours early this morning got me a little further along.   All these still WIP.

Plague bearer yellow and the tablehorde

Howdy lead abusers.  I am in a 'get shit done' mood, so launched into a desk full of black primed minis.
A desk full?  Madness you say.  Well yeah, but to keep things rolling along I loaded up on easy kills- things with only a few colors and details.  You know the kinda thing... dogs, rats, boars, snakes and armored things.  Three or four steps and your done.

I had intended to just preshade them and paint their bases- but got a bit carried away and started coloring and highlighting some. 

By the end of the session I tried a pus yellow color scheme on my rogue trader era Plaguebobs of Nurglepants.  Kinda John Blanche demon yellows but sliding towards green.  This was in reaction to the 'green is boring' comments.  See, I listen.
  I think these two tests work nicely- and it will merge them a little more into my chaos undivided warband.  I will throw in some redder, a pale one and a greenish one for variation.

Morrison and Kev Adams individual takes on plaguebearers.  Work in progress.

Everything from Ral Partha golems, Citadel preslotta dungeon monsters and a couple of 80's chaos champions and limited editions dance merrily across the table.  Bliss!

Chaos Spawn

Okay, okay... I replaced the zoats head.  Tsk... you people.
Under the knife went a two headed chaos hound.  Much more spawny.

As you can see, I got the base tints down on my zoatspawn, but am yet to highlight  or smooth out the skin.  But progress is happening- which is nice.

Also pictured are two other spawn- the body from the dog mated with a demonette, and I think I posted a pic of the Blanche inspired winged spawn a while ago.

All very work in progress.  But its nice to feel like I am gaining momentum again.

I also managed to undershade and color tint a host of 80's orcs- including two boar riding heroes from Kev Adams first ravening hordes release and some limited editions.  That was fun.  I have been dying to paint those babies since Duran Duran where in the charts.

So yes, some progress finally!  Enjoy.

Turbolister Joy-Joy

So turbolister does this really cute, adorable thing where it takes grams and coverts them to ounces using an interesting bit of maths.  20 grams- the weight of a LE Motley Maniac, equates to 0.705479 oz.  Turbolister thinks 20 grams = 20 oz.

So motley maniac would weigh 566.99g- the same as shipping you 30 motley maniacs.  Imagine that... thirty limited edition motley maniacs.  Oooooh.  I went to a happy place.

So I gave ebay a call and we solved the problem by taking down the listings and crediting back all my lovely, lovely listing fee money.  All good.  Soooo... the problem is that Ebay recognised this bug in may... but here I am in december without a patch.  Great.

I thought I would help out the coder responsible by creating the elaborate code required to fix the problem.

weightB = (weightA * 0.035274)

Copy and paste this into your code.  If you can find the copy/ paste function on your keyboard- (which is the thing infront of you that you sleep on... in case you where wondering.)

Ebay recognised this error in march 2013.  It is december.  Something tells me the turbolister team has been downsized to a broom cupboard containing a bent paperclip.

I will be doing them the slow way shortly...

Sold to the guy in the funny hat

Forget black friday, it's blackdwarf wednesday!  Time to trample each other for capital gain.

I finally waded through the agony that is Turbolister to bring you lead, sweet lead from my doubles pile.  IT WAS HELL...  so please buy something so I can afford something to steady my nerves.

Stay tuned, for I have buckets and buckets more to list, which include some pretty sexy metal 40k minis from the 90's  including termies, landspeeders, metal dark angels and other shiney nice-nice such as heaps of awesome Reaper minis.  In fact it looks like I will be regularly selling on ebay for a while, looking at the box of stuff I have.

In the tradition of selling 80's lead, here is the details in 'ooligan speak.

Cor!  Blummin led boyz... Here da linky...  Waaaaaahhhhggg!!! Biiiiddd!

http://www.ebay.com.au/usr/kingofdaveness

...and here sum purdy pikturez- coz without pikturz it didnt 'appen.

And many more!

I hope these babies find good homes.  sniff... no... it's okay...  they grow up so fast...