So todays post marks the centenary of my weekly waffles and to be honest I’m amazed I’ve made it this far. I’ve said before that when I started the site it was really only a way of rekindling the flagging enthusiasm for the hobby I was experiencing at the time. And I have to say it has done the job. Over the last hundred editions it’s slowly turned into the norm with me starting each week thinking about what I’m going to have to do too have some content for the next instalment. Some weeks this is easy and occasionally I even manage to get ahead of myself and get a few items in the bag for future use. But most of the time it’s just me getting to the middle of the week and starting to knock something together.
As a way of marking the occasion I thought I would take the opportunity to have a look back at some of the things that I’ve done since I started the site. Probably the most notable thing was the trip to Adepticon earlier this year, with the excuse that it would give me something to write about. Well that and the fact that it also involved a trip to Chicago and lots of beer drinking with some good friends. But it was also a chance to meet up with new friends. One of the best moments of the whole thing was when I met Greg (@3dgreg) who I’d been following on twitter for a while. I was getting the beers in and Al put a tweet online saying we were in the bar at the hotel. Greg saw the tweet and was also in the bar so he tracked us down and introduced himself. A case of friends on social media, from different sides of the pond, actually getting an impromptu chance to meet. And that is one of the things I really like about this hobby, it doesn’t matter where you come from we all have something in common.
I also took part in my first Guild Ball tournament at the North West Gaming Centre in Stockport where got an absolute pasting. I only managed to win one game over the entire weekend but still had a really good time. Some of it was down to bad tactics and some down to the dice gods but it was all fun. Everyone was friendly and helpful, offering encouragement and tips.
Another first for me was attending my first UK game show, nothing on the scale of Adepticon but it was still a good experience. I spent far too much money on shiny things and will certainly be going to more in the future.
The other big thing for me over the last 100 editions is that I feel that my painting has improved I’ve started to move away from the more formulaic approach I used to have. What I mean by this is that before I would always dilute my paints using the same ratio rather than looking at the consistency. I’ve also started to mix up my colours a bit more. A good example of this would be skin tones where before I had one way of doing skin so it looked like everyone came from exactly the same place. Now I have a couple of different starting points that allow me to paint a much wider range of skin tones, although I still struggle with very dark tones so that’s something to work on. A bit revelation has been discovering the wonders of the wet pallet. Something that I really didn’t think I needed until I tried it, and now I won’t go back, if you haven’t tried one give it a go.
I’ve also started to paint a wider range of miniatures. When I started the site it was on the back of getting a bit fed up with 40K and looking for something new. But I’d only ever painted Sci-fi so everything was a new challenge. The result is that I now feel happy to give anything a go regardless of the genera. As a bit of retrospective I thought it would be nice to share some of my favourite pictures from the last 100 issues that I think stand out for me.
I thought I’d start this retrospective with some 40k miniatures that sort of top and tail my work to date with some OrK and Space Marine projects. For as long as I’ve been playing 40K I’ve liked Oks for their conversion options and here we have some scratch built Ork robots (Shock Attack Gun and a boy) and a converted Dread. Then to give them something to fight against we have a Deathwatch Space Marine
Next up we have some of the more misunderstood denizens of Gotham city, who are just trying to make a living for themselves but get picked on my a bad man dressed up as a bat.
At about the same time I was getting my Sci-fi fix from Infinity. These models are some of the most detailed out there but you have to have a bit of patience when it comes to putting them together. But they are well worth the effort.
One thing that really has hooked me since the Kickstartrer landed has been Guild Gall. In fact it’s become something of an obsession with me trying to keep up to date with each new release. I haven’t quite managed but I do have seven teams to pick from. Here we have three of my favourites.
Not quite the same scale of painting but Star Wars X-Wing has also been something I really enjoy so when the Outrider arrived I decided to pimp it a little bit. Mainly to make it all mine but it also makes it easier to pick out when there is more than one on the board.
Along with Guild Ball Wild West Exodus has been a big game for me over the last couple of years. I missed out on the original Kickstarter but did back that last one so I now have a nice collection of Lawmen and Confederates. I really like these minis and just hope that now things are being run by Wayland Game it continues to grow. But only time will tell on that one.
Next up are a couple of wild cards in the form of a Wargames Exclusive alternative Tau that I painted up just because I really like the model. And a Hill Giant that I painted up to use in Frostgrave. The giant was also an exercise in learning to use an airbrush with 80% of it being done using one.
And then last but by no means least we have a return to Games Workshop in the form of some Silveneth. In this case it is a Tree Lord that I really enjoyed painting. The only problem is that having set the style I want to use it now means I have to paint the rest of the starter box in the same way.
Now I’ve had a good old nostalgia session it’s time to bring you up to date with what I’ve been up to over the last week. No game again this week but Al is now back off his jollies so game night is back on next week. Pete has picked up a copy of Kill Team so we are going to start to have a look at that. Might not get a full game in but we are going to give it a go.
On the hobby front I haven’t manage to finish off the first half of the kill team. I’ve nearly got there but I keep finding little bits of detail that I have missed. I’ve not been able to paint skin this week. I don’t know what it is but I seem to have a something of a mental block and every time I pick the brush up to get it done it goes wrong. Still I’ve not got a lot more to do to finish them and game night is a nice motivator to get them finished.
And that’s it for this centenary edition. Not a lot of new content but a nice look back over the last 99 editions. With a bit of luck I might still be here for 200 but for now I’m just going to keep plodding away from week to week. Have a good week and I hope to catch you all again next week.
