Wow, it's been a while, hasn't it?

Lots of stuff happened, I lost the heart to hobby and blog for a bit after the events of last post. I did pick hobbying back, but not yet keeping up with this blog. Especially as I got Covid last September. Which turned out to be Long Covid... Added to that discovering I have diabetes (possibly triggered/exacerbated by the covid infection) and getting the flu on top of that all, resetting my recovery back to zero in december.

Anyhow, enough moping, let's see what I've been up to in the intervening months. Not gonna say much, just dump pictures.

April 2022

May 2022

June 2022

A commission for a friend.

July 2022

August  2022

September & October 2022

'Rona....

November 2022

December 2022

In December, I also pitched a Traveller RPG one-off to my friends, that may, if all like it, become a campaign.

And I (re)discovered Battletech!

January 2023

And that's us all caught up.

The 28mm scale Warhammer mech still needs basing, once that is done, I'll take some glamour shots of the beast. He'll be accompanied by a Locust and maybe some infantry, for large scale skirmish level games and/or mech on mech duels.  I still need to decide what the OpFor will be...

Catching up

Hi folks,

Been a few weeks, sorry for not updating in the meantime.

A certain project that I made as a gift for a pair of Youtubers I really like has been received by them and so now I can share it with you.
The Youtubers in question are Snipe and Wib and the gift was a set of custom Gaslands cars in the colours of their own Space Marine Chapter, the Cardinal Archivists. I found out for each what their favorite kind of car was in the game and built them one.

Here the cars are pre-primer and painting:

 As you can see, the roofs of the cars are covered in steel tape, allowing the guns to be attached with magnets.

And the cars once painted (main colours and chapter marking done with airbrush):

I even managed to insert some drivers (somewhat) resembling the intended owners:

Both cars have been personalized to their owner, each sporting a favoured catchphrase and of course, Snipe's beloved antlers on the hood:

I also totally forgot to show you the group of Cyberpunk elite soldiers/special ops team I painted a few weeks ago:

These are old "Legions of Steel" Earth troopers, given a quick basecoat and shade with the airbrush before handpainting the details. First time in years I've used decals as well. Just a quick job to get them out of the Cabinet of Shame (more like a Room of Shame!) and table ready for when Osprey's Cyberpunk rules come out sometime next year.

The Multiverse Gaming terrain is on hold for the moment, sadly, for a combination of reasons:

For one, I want to incorporate LEDs (see previous posts about the terrain), but I found I'm getting cold feet about trying something new that I don't totally feel comfortable with in such a large project. So I will have to find/build a quick terrain project to serve as a test bed and confidence builder.

Second reason is that I've been losing the energy for large(r) hobby endeavours at the moment, due to some worry about my mother's deteriorating state of health, which means sitting idly by the sidelines as professionals essentially decide her fate. Most likely she'll need to go to a home for the elderly as she is no longer capable of taking care of herself, and no longer sound enough of mind to arrange her own affairs.

Third reason, and one that has only "materialized" this week is Blackstone Fortress. My copy arrived last Thursday, and I've spent today looking at the contents of the box, leafing the books. I've also made a start at assembling the miniatures. I assume this will be taking up my hobby time the coming weeks/months. I've always liked dungeoncrawler games, and to finally have one for 40K is quite exciting! The mini's are gorgeous, I hope the game is of similar quality as the plastics. Hopefully I'll have some worthwhile pictures for my next post.

See you all next time!

Wood, Steel and Gas; Ups and downs

Hi folks!

It's been a fairly busy weekend, so let's tell you about it.
Friday started with a scare, as my wife messaged me at work, that the decorative pieces of apple wood she had in her study had suddenly sprouted holes! Turns out we had a case of interlopers, longhorn beetles to be precise. This was a bit of a scare, as her study is very close to the garage. Where I do all my woodworking. Even more as she found one of the beetles right at the doorstep!
So as soon as I came home friday, I sorted through my wood supply. Sadly my worst fears were confirmed when a lovely large oak tree cross-section I'd been saving for a table showed fresh bore holes.
So a cull of my wood stack was necessary. I had a pile of pallet wood for small projects, that has now been redesignated as campfire wood (more as a precaution). Luckily my fancy woods are treated/kiln-dried and the beetle we found only goes after untreated woods. Still, getting some bug remedy for my wood next week. I'm going to try and save the big oak slab. It's currently sealed in air-tight plastic wrapping with a few pots of alcohol inside, hopefully I can choke/poison most of the bugs that way in preparation for the proper wood treatment.

Saturday afternoon was spent with the airbrush, touching up the primer on my second Necromunda building:

As I had the airbrush out, I also progressed on the Necromunda 2017 cover and doors.
I'd found the proper dilution for the chipping medium, so I've started applying colour to a batch of them, over the rust basecoat:

These require some more faffing about in the future, but so far so good.

I had planned to continue painting my Goliath gang today, but after a visit to the in-laws, my muse thought otherwise. (Fickle thing that she is...)
Never one to argue with inspiration, Gaslands conversions it was. I just pulled out a few cars that I had prepped for conversion (rivets drilled out and metal parts stripped of paint) and started to randomly do thing to them:

I started out with marrying the body of a low-rider pickup truck to the chassis of a bigfoot (The plan is to evoke, rather than outright copy, the bigfoot truck from the latest Mad Max movie). I've been fiddling and adjusting it throughout the afternoon, switching back and forth between it and other conversions. In the back of the picture above you can see a hot-rodded VW Beetle above a donor car that would supply part of it's wheels. I wanted the Beetle as a buggy. I've also added crew to the open-topped Rat Rod. Several cars you see in the pic had nothing done with them today, they were just there to witness the mutilat...erm.."elevation" of their peers.

Here's the Rat Rod with crew (guns and Mad-Maxification to occur at some other time).
Also, the buggy with it's new wheels. (I love the stance it has now!) There is a rather large gap between the rear wheels and the bonnet, this is intentional, as I will be fitting zoomie pipes there. :D
The cab on the Big Foot has reached it's final position as well.

As an encore, I pulled out these two. Same basic car, but the frontmost one has had it's rear wheels/axle mounting replaced to give it more ground clearance and "rake" and it's trunk hatch sawn out (the second one will get it's trunk hatch sawn out as well). Any guesses as to which cars these will be?

See you next time!

Maxing the Mad, or how to make a Wasteland, part 5

Well, the final two hills have been finished.
I had some colour matching issues. As I said in a previous post my basecoat paint had run out. I couldn't find a replacement so I found a close match. I had also forgotten that I had added a fair bit of yellow to the mix last time. So these hills came out a bit more ruddy on the mid tones as well as a bit more chalky on the highlights.


I'm not too bothered as it still falls within the same natural range of colours.
Here they are, along with a dune and rocky outcrop I had done earlier for comparison:

I now have a core Gaslands/DAK terrain set, I just need to build specific items for both games/settings. But that is for a later date, I think, right now my mind is on Necromunda, and I think I'll be building terrain for that the coming weeks....

See you next time!

Mutual annihilation

We had another game of Gaslands tonight.

I took the opportunity to put all my WIP desert terrain on the table and pad it a bit with some of my old Gorkamorka terrain pieces. It worked and played well!
The game was very entertaining tonight, as it ended in total annihilation of all participants:

The end came when the final two surviving cars each rode up opposite sides of the same dune ridge, and rammed each other on its peak. One car was destroyed, but it was loaded with missiles, oil canisters and molotovs. Naturally it promptly exploded, totally shredding the other car!
We all had a good laugh about that one!

See you next time!

Weekend good, monday bad...

This weekend has been a busy one!

Replaced my son's bed. He had a creaky, wobbly metal loft bed and that has been disassembled and brought to the skip. He now has a nice and sturdy wooden bed, again loft model so he can have his desk underneath.

I also made some nice progress on the two rocky hills for Gaslands/WWII Afrika. I fixed the damage/thin spots on the filler layer and glued on the rocks and sand:

After that I sealed and primed them with two coats of a slightly watered down mix of PVA and black paint:

And at that point I ran into some problems:
My brown paint for this terrain has almost run out.  I couldn't finish basecoating the hills this sunday. And it's a bottle of craft paint I bought nearly a decade ago (2009) and I have no idea if the local arts and crafts store(s) still sell it! Now I may need to find a similarly tinted alternative. Sadly the local arts and craft shops are only open when I'm at work. If that hiccup hadn't occurred I might have gotten these hills painted. Oh well, no deadline, no worries. Though I would have liked to have them available for our game this Thursday.

As a diversion during drying time for the paint layers, I dug out my boxes of scenery materials with the intent of going through them to find materials and ideas for Necromunda, as I'm getting psyched to build terrain for that. This is my stash, minus specialist materials like XPS, foamboard, mdf and plaster and filler and such:

Sadly, piling this stack from the garage to the living room was I got to do this weekend. The problems with the paint for the terrain (exacerbated by my overthinning the paint in attempt to stretch it to at least finish these hills) cost me more time than I thought. As wel as my back and shoulders being knackered and sore from stress and poor seating at work (which luckily will soon be a past thing), meant I had to opt for having the occasional lie down on the couch, instead of maniacally rummaging through these boxes.
Oh, well, there is always next weekend, or the weekend after that. Necromunda won't return until November.

Speaking of work related aches, todat the boss dropped a little bomb: Originally the project I'm currently working in was supposed to last until October 1st, with maybe the chance of another extension. Today we got the news that the project will terminate sooner, to be precise: coming friday! As of  Monday, my job will cease to exist. Some choice words were quietly muttered, naturally. Of course this didn't help the aforementioned back aches.... It means I spent most of the evening applying for unemployment benefits (hoping I don't need them, but better safe than sorry) and frantically sending out more job applications. It also meant that today me and my teammates were repeatedly encountering the following error:

So, my goal for the coming week is ride out the work week with my head and professionalism held high, try and not let the dour mood at work infect my current hobby drive and good mood at home and find a new job as fast as I can. Wish me luck!

See you next time!

Catching up

As I said, I haven't been able to access my full hobby toolkit these past few weeks. That doesn't mean I've been idle. I packed my painting kit to take along with me. And with it I managed to paint the seven Plague Marines from the Dark Imperium kit:

This is the first time I managed to paint and complete miniatures from a 40K starter set in the same year as I purchased it! Shocking, isn't it?
I've chosen colours close to the original Death Guard scheme, but all icky and gross. :D
Now all that's left to for this is the three characters, the Foetid Bloat Drone...oh, and 20 Plaguewalkers! After that, no more Death Guard, a nice, tidy, open and close project. No pressure, no demands, just the enjoyment of painting them.

While I was away I visited a local thriftstore and claimed these two for Gaslands:

Great, aren't they? I think the pickup in the front will become a so-called Claw Car, armed with a harpoon and a plow/claw, meant to  drag other vehicles to a standstill ( Like the cars that shoot harpoons into the War Rig towards the end of Fury Road...). The other one will, no doubt, join my cavalcade of rat rods. I also found a VW van derived truck/trailer set that may become a second War Rig as well as a close to scale train set that will become terrain pieces.

I also managed to sneak away to my workshop for an afternoon and made a little progress on the rocky hills:

Once the filler has been sanded smooth, I can start adding sand and rocks, after that paint (sadly all outdoor jobs, and the weather is threatening to be abysmal this weekend...).

Plus, when I returned home yesterday, a new toy had been delivered and was waiting for me:

Which means I now have a syphon feed basecoater and workhorse for terrain and a dual action airbrush for more controlled excercises! It's an off-brand cheapo one, so I'll have to try it and find out how well it works. Nevertheless, I'm excited to have it.

And ofcourse, GW dropped a bombshell this past week:

I loved Necromunda back in the day, and can't wait to get started again! I hope the game will live up to the expectations, but if not, it's new miniatures and old rules all the way... So I'm not too worried.
Several folks in the newly emerging gaming group (all old buddies who found each other and wargaming again after several years) have also expressed interest/enthusiasm, which gives good prospects to have some games and or a campaign or two. Happy days ahead!
What makes this a very fortuitous coincidence is that I've been dreaming and stockpiling materials to build Necromunda terrain for quite a while, and between the foamcutter and the airbrushes I finally have the tools to do a proper job of it.

I've been taking stock of what's on my plate hobbywise for the coming period and, with the recent revelation from GW, it breaks down to this:
-Gaslands: Build more cars and terrain. (The core set of this terrain can also do duty for WWII Afrika, which is good because:)
-Battlegroup: Follow along in Johan's painting challenge with my DAK (this does mean I have to complete two Recce choices before the end of August, I need to hurry!) and build some terrain, which again, will also serve for Gaslands.
-Warhammer 8th edition: I had planned to have a serious go of getting my Howling Griffons up and running, but that may get superceded by the imminent arrival of Necromunda (see below). If I need a palate cleanser from other projects, I can do some more work on the Death Guard part of the Dark Imperium set (the Primaris will be absorbed by my Howling Griffons).
-Necromunda!!! I intend to finish painting my Escher miniatures and build a nice, atmosperic set of terrain. Hopefully before/at the November release.

All this will be in addition to finding a new job (as my current project is about to end soon) and spending time on woodworking again, plus all the usual day to day stuff. This means you shouldn't expect lightning progress from me and I will need to find ways to use my hobby time more effectively. A.k.a. streamlining and de-cluttering things!

So, the coming months I've got plenty to do, hobby-wise! For the coming weekend the plans are to, if the weather permits, make some more progress on the Gaslands terrain and/or try out the new airbrush. If the weather is non-cooperative, I will be cleaning up and re-arranging the hobby den for all the construction and painting that lies ahead of me... If any time is left, I should get cracking on those Recce choices for Battlegroup before the deadline expires.

See you next time!

Maxing the Mad, or how to make a Wasteland, part 4

This week has been marked by experimentation...

First I received the crackle gel I had ordered.  After a false start I had a first result I was happy with. Experiment number 1.
Second, I received the couplers I needed to finally hook up my old airbrush to the compressor (the whole airbrush-experiment had stalled years ago out of frustration with compressed air canisters and lack of a compressor).  Experiment number 2.
One plus one led to a piece of cracked earth rough terrain that needed a basecoat:

The airbrush performed well, though a few things have become obvious:
-The coupling between airbrush and hose needs some o-rings as it leaks air.
-The compressor hose and coupling are on the heavy side, I'd like to be able to use the original hose for the brush, but I'd need a coupling piece for that.
-My current airbrush is definitely a basecoat and terrain brush, maybe in time I'd like to ad a second airbrush to the roster for finer work (my current one is a single-action syphon feeder, the addition would be a dual-action grav-feeder).

Naturally terrain piede it still needs highlighting and such, but that will be done with traditional methods (a.k.a. sponging and drybrushing. But so far, I'm calling this a succesfull experiment.
I may be switching gears for a bit, as I'll be having limited acces to my hobby space and gear the next couple of weeks/weekends, so I'll limit myself to a small self-contained project; the Nurgle part of my Dark Imperium box. After that, it should be Gaslands firing on all cylinders again!

UPDATE:
This is the crackle gel I used for the above terrain piece, I slathered it on in about 1mm thickness. I think a little thinner would have been better, as that would give finer crackling:

And as a bonus, a pic of my jury rigged airbrushing set up:

What I'd like to improve about it is to find a way to link up the original hose to the airbrush, as it's much lighter and more manageable than the compressor one. And I'd like to either take the top off the box or put some vent holes at the rear, as I get a lot of mist drifting back into my face. Maybe a white sheet on the inside to give some better light would be nice too. Making it indoor-proof would be completely awesome, ofcourse...

See you next time! (Which may be a bit longer, as the next three weekends are booked full...)

Maxing the Mad, or how to make a Wasteland, part 3

Well, today has been a productive day, the morning was spent painting the dunes and rock pillars:

After the sealant coats with thinned PVA (mixed with paint) I painted the basecoat with a paint gun (as in: the big thing that came with the compressor, not an airbrush...). Which, after some double sided tape/hot glue to fix the terrain pieces in place, worked acceptably.
Drybrushing followed after that. While the dunes ended up a bit darker than planned, I'm pleased with the result. The rock technique has been declared a succes, so I proceeded to start on one of the larger hills:

Hopefully I can get some more progress on this piece tomorrow.

See you next time!