2019 - The Autopsy

I like to do these year in review posts. I treat my blog as much as a personal diary than anything else, and a look back at the year gone does help galvanize me to dive into new projects. Let's begin the procedure then, shall we? Scalpel please nurse.

The year began with me adding the finishing touches to my Khorne bloodfleet for Man O'War. This was a project that kind of blindsided me. I had watched some of my hobby peeps working on their own fleets and I was suddenly gripped with a want to build one myself.

It was a nice contained project. One squadron of death galleys, two of ironsharks and three bloodships. Enough for a decent sized fleet. I intended to add maybe a couple of monsters and maybe a chaos dwarf ally contingent, but not until I'd played some games with the fleet as is. Games played with the fleet to date: zero.

Once the bloodships had left the dock I returned to a favourite faction of mine, the genestealer cult. First up were a couple of the new models, an acolyte and metamorph.

The new range is damn nice. There are so many great bits and pieces on the sprues, I feel hopelessly spoiled. I had to paint up one of the buzz saw acolytes first, it's such a cool weapon.

There are some games/ranges that hit our want button head centre, where there is no question that you'll buy every kit, card and custom dice. The cult is one for me. I hoovered every model in the range. I even have one of those big drill terrain pieces that I'm plaaaanniinnngg to paint? This gives me a pleasantly large amount of parts I can draw from when making cult models.

With my cult mojo high, the next thing I worked on was a cult terrain piece.

The Watcher was a smashed up old statuette a neighbour gave me. An odd gift, but he knew I was into modelling and though I could make use of it. He was correct.

The artwork in the revised cult codex of a giant cult statue was what set me off. It was a terribly fun project, hunting for tyranid parts large enough to suit and green-stuffing it all together.

The next while saw more cult added to the ranks of the faithful. A neophyte icon bearer based on one of the original Bob Olley hybrids, a cyborg purestrain, aberrant and some mindslaves all moved through the paint queue.

The mindslaves are part of an attempt to build a cult list for the old 2nd edition White Dwarf tyranid list. Some old school tyranid warriors, squigs and maybe even a screamer-killer are all lined up to add in. In more modern games the slaves will work as purestrains.

The next model up was probably my favourite of the year. Kol Renko, jackal alphus of the Wyrm Forged.

I painted this fellow up for my cult, but also to take part in the Great Ash Wastes race at BOYL 2019. I had wanted to build a cult rider for years. All that squirreling away cult bits and pieces came in very handy here. I drew the concept art for the head myself a while back, which was then sculpted by Mr Bob Olley. Once at BOYL I learned there was a painting competition, one of which I entered Kol into. The competition was judged by Tony Yates, Garth James and John Blanche. To my delight Kol brought home the win. It may seem I'm blowing my own trumpet somewhat here, but like, the trumpet is right there. What's a man to do?

Anyhow, pre-BOYL there was still some painting to do for upcoming games, including Asslessman's Epic bash. So it was another hobby bucket list model got ticked. The classic warlord titan.

The Misericordia is an Iron Skulls chaos titan. I've had some waiting in the wings for years, and it was deeply satisfying to get some paint on one. I magnetized the arms and weapons as I plan on adding some more titans to create a battlegroup in time. 

I had a game of Strontium Dog coming up at BOYL too, run by the excellent Michael Cassidy, so I took the opportunity to paint the Foundry version of Middenface McNulty. 

Middenface is a Tim Prow sculpt, which I always enjoy painting. The sculpts, not Tim. Apparently he based Middenface's rather pert bum on his own, which is information I'm not entirely sure what to do with. So now you get to deal with that. Tim must do a lot of squats.

Lastly, another surprise favourite of mine for the year was Faherty the dog from Shieldwall. A very good boi. He was for use in the Cheetor's Terminator game at BOYL, which was a great laugh. We all died. My character (Ulysses Jones) was shredded by a T1000 with a minigun. Good times.

Post BOYL my good pal Cheetor sent me on one of the limited 'Bubba's Revenge' minis from Warlord Games. I was so chuffed I painted it right away. 

I enjoyed the Strontium Dog game I played, it's something I could do more of I reckon.

As the year waned things went all undead. I've been quite taken with Warcry (which I also haven't played yet) and decided to build an undead warband. I had the core of the band, so I added in a few new wights and skeletons to bring it up the muster. 

This was my first real foray with contrast paints, which I used on the wights black iron armour. It's good stuff, I'll be using it much more over 2020 I think. 

You can see the contrast here on the the Morley wight. It's Black Templar over Leadbelcher spray, lightly drybrushed with Stormhost Silver. Simples.

Finally, as the year closed out I began working more on my Gaslands gang. Early days still, but I did finish the first car, The Preacher.

Early 2020 will see me add some pals to the gang. It's fun re-purposing old toy cars. This one, once used in my Dark Future games, had been unlovingly flung in a box and forgotten. I think it's about thirty years old!

So, while I did paint some long desired miniatures this year, on the whole my painting total is way down, at a paltry 23 models. Terrible. My gaming this year is as bad, with BOYL and a couple of weekends with friends being my only gaming for the entire year. Bad Mr Saturday, BAD.

On the plus side, BOYL was AMAZING. I loved it. It was also my first one. Meeting up with pals old and new and just rolling about in hobby for days does wonderful things for the complexion. I also finally made my pilgrimage to Nottingham to kneel at the altar of Warhammer. That was great to do, after many years wanting to make the visit. 

Also, I did get an article printed in the November edition of Wargames Illustrated, the Dredd special, along with several photos of my miniatures. So that's nice.

So what for this year? Well, as mentioned, I have some Gaslands cars for my gang, The Faithful Sons, I want to work on. After that I think I might Warcry it up some, once the card packs for the chaos warbands are released and I know what I can take. Some Underworlds too perhaps. Who knows?