So it Begins

I was going to post teasers with no explanation but I cant bring myself to do it ;)

This is of course my work on a counts as Wraithknight based on a venerable dragon (Elgadon in fact) who has been sustained in life through soulstones and jazz.

The armour on his back won't look so daft when the wings are attached, and is going to house the Wraithknight weapons I have on order!

That's all I'm giving away for now :p

Thanks for stopping by
Lofty

Festivities

Hi all

It's been a few weeks since the last update, but the reasons are pretty valid. The first week in August was performance week for the theatre company I'm involved with, and the week after that we were at a festival, so time has been pretty short to say the least. Then of course I'm having to work this afternoon grumble grumble...

There are a few things to update on though so let's talk about that.
I played another game with my friend, but lost this one only barely.  A lot of fun again, and my Striking Scorpions managed to almost save the day. I struggled to make my Jetbikes effective, and they got chewed up pretty quickly. Perhaps not fully understanding the rules didn't help. In fact it didn't at all :p The game was organised relatively last minute so next time I will have chance to buff up.  My avatar took names yet again, as did the borrowed Wraithlord, but my Dire Avengers got shredded despite being in cover, meaning that they struggled even more to be effective against T5 Nurgle marines :(

On the bright side, the case worked well, and kept everything dry etc. I just need to finish adding magnets to bases and think of something deeper to carry the dragons et al.

The only other news really is some random purchases of ten corsair bodies (with cloaks of course) for less than just ten cloaks, and far more readily available. Out come the clippers, and job done! There are enough now for my Exarchs, Autarch, 'Shining Spears' and spare.
I also stumbled across some High Elf Shadow Warrior torsos + cloaks for £3.00 posted rather than just the cloak backs (out of stock) for £1.50 each! Warlocks here we come!
Lastly but by no means least, I managed to snag a Zombie dragon kit, after receiving an email saying it was restocked, I jumped on and bought it with what I think is the right sized base. I then started to bookmark the correct weapon components for the Wraithknight and check their availability daily, to the extent that the day they came in to stock, I had bought them out of stock by the time the email came out!
What all this comes to really is that next week and bank holiday Monday (who doesn't love those?!) I will be getting my very own version of a Wraithknight together, with WIP photos out the ears!

Sorry it's another one with no pictures, but hopefully there will be a good amount soon with my Wraithknight build.

Thanks for stopping by
Lofty

Conflict of Interests

Hi again

Just a quick one today. I've mentioned before that I'm part of a theatre group (I think I have at any rate) as stage manager, and it's performance week this week so time is scarce! Next week is also busy as we are at a festival from Thursday to Monday so I will be posting again when we get back.

In brief then - I ordered some corsair cloaks (actually ten corsairs with no arms or heads from ebay) as I've pretty much given up on my cack-handed attempts at molding my own so I will be adding those to everyone I can fit when they arrive!
I've also magnetised a lot of bases, to discover that the magnetic sheeting I ordered doesn't have a great deal of pull. Backup plan is to find a small baking sheet that will fit in my case(s)

The real reason for posting however is that I ordered some pretty awesome stuff with my birthday loot.
Whisky Glasses

Shot Glasses

Both of these were actually totally bespoke orders, after seeing the stormtrooper shotglass/tumbler combo on the Etsy store. I am chuffed to bits with them, I love the designs and the look of the sets. Really very please that I ordered them, and would recommened them to anyone on the lookout for geek/collectible 'homewares' (is that the right word?). 

So head over to Unique & Geek Gifts on Etsy to pick something up now! Don't be afraid to ask for custom designs as both my orders were totally custom!

Thanks for stopping by

Lofty

Older and Wiser?

What a great week!

Last Thursday (17th) was my birthday and my wife and I spent the day together.  On Friday night some friends came to stay in preparation for the Manchester Comiccon on Saturday.

We had a great time, I went as Jayne Cobb from Serenity/Firefly and got lots of comments/requests for photos which was very strange as I'm not a people person at all!
I won't go into too much detail other than to share the photos I took of some particularly good costumes that we spotted. We mainly spent the day shopping and looking at all the stalls & memorabilia, not being too interested in the 'celebrity' panels etc.

I managed to source a carry case as well whilst on sale, and first purchase discount brought it to £13 delivered, and I ordered some magnets and magnetic sheets (not as sticky s magnets stuck to my PC case...) and have lined the case (sans cupcake things) and started to magnetise my miniatures for transport.  I'm still looking to source a deeper box for the dragons to go in, but that isnt proving particularlry easy due to the weird dimensions.

There are a few more specific subjects which I will be writing up in the coming week, but also lots going on (I've mentioned before that I stage manage a theatre company who have a performance next week), so bear with me :)

Thanks for stopping by

Loftybloke

Riders

Hi all

Just a very quick post to show off the work I've completed today on the 'jetbikes'. Below pic is one of two Shuriken Cannon armed riders.

You can also (barely) see the bedroll, and baggage I have added. the baggage is the remnants of a Dark Eldar warriors belongings, which are part of the leg assembly. I think it works pretty well.

I based all 6 lizards, though some still need tome attention with a file, and i constructed legs for all riders, and made a seat in each saddle to accommodate the fact that the legs aren't meant to sit astride the moulded saddle.

I am still deliberating how to best arm the riders with regular armaments in order for them to look like they aren't just guardians sitting on a lizard. Will see what inspiration strikes :)

Thanks for stopping by

Lofty

Time Warp

I'm not going to go into why its taken so long to update because there's no real reason other than not having a lot of time/motivation to do so :P call me lazy, call me what you will but here's a couple of backdated blogs :)

29/6/14
Hi again

I know I promised an update a Monday or so ago, and eluded even to more regular updates, but I simply haven't had chance.

This past week we were in Ireland, and the week before that, I can t even think why I didn't get chance to write anything up, but there we are.

Just a brief one today as last week has burnt me out a fair bit and I've ended up with some weird hayfever/headcold combo and my eyes are terrible sore.

I realise that the main factor in updates is timing, and had a bit of a brainwave to solve this, and as such I'm hoping for a keyboard which will work with my 10" tablet for my birthday (July 17th hint hint :P) so that I can write and post things on the train to/from work and utilise some of that time. Hopefully this will go some way towards regular updates, and themed days (WIP Wednesday, DnD Monday) Which I had hoped to do).

I tried out some blu-stuff molds after the last post, and the results were mixed.  It is perfect for casting flat backed items, but for anything which has detail at the back which needs capturing, then a two part mold would be required, and is beyond my current ken. I hope to be able to achieve this though eventually or I'll bankrupt myself buying bits for the Eldar project. It seems that insta-mold maybe best for two part molds so I will be pressing this as a solution at some point.

5/7/14
In the interest of maintaining topic for this post, we are jumping ahead in time a bit here :)
I had an actual game of 40k against a friend this week! Look, proof-

So here you can see my fledgling force bolstered by Dire Avengers for obligatory troop choices and a Wraithlord for points. Just shy of 1k points.

And here are the forces of Nurgle arrayed before me, cultists on the left marines with a mark in the middle, and hellbrute/rhino with plague marines & lord on the left.

I enjoyed the game ALOT. Lots of the rules are the same to the last edition of 40k that I played (going back maybe ten years?) and the new rules serve to make it very fun to play, and easy to pick up.  I want to get my troops choices sorted so the next time i sit down with my miniatures will be guardian jetbikes and Wave Serpents.

I also want to get a transport solution sorted, and in true style, I found my solution here and despite the containers in question being Walmart branded, they seem to be avaialbe with free UK shipping on Amazon. I alos thought that this kind of thing would work also (with trays removed), but I would need to be careful with the height of things like wave serpents and Wraith units. I'm thinking at teh moment that a combination of the cupcake trays and another, deeper plastic box for the larger items will be the best bet. Hoping that both will also fit into some kind of holdall to transport easily and discreetly. Credit to Element Games for the magnetic solutions :)

It's my Birthday in a couple of weeks, and the birthday of a friend (whom i've known for 25 years) and we each mentioned (independantly) to each other recently the new game from Mantic - Deadzone and we are splitting the cost of the starter box four our birthday gift to eachother this year. So expedct some unboxing and painting progress entries for this coming up maybe August kind of time. I think that's it for miniatures and modelling for the time being.

I've mentioned before that I want to add a wraithknight model to the army ant some point and have bounced some ideas of a friend (Deadzone friend) so expect either some mystery WIPs or some more detailed progress discussions (with full disclosure), I will hopefully pick up some of the required parts with any spare money after my birthday :)

That's it for the time being, thought I do have a 'collectables' related post to update with at some point hopefully soon (tomorrow?). There is a Couple of Birthdays today so I won't get much more time after posting this. There are also three birthdays next week including mine... What's so good about July?!

Thanks for stopping by

Lofty

Time Stamp

What happened to the witty blog titles eh? I feel I’m slacking :/  I know it’s been over a week since my last post, but we were away over the weekend with the lovely Miss Vicky, and have been pretty tired this week.

I also promised a DnD related post on Monday, but I was still pretty wiped out from our awesome weekend, and starting training again after a week or so off (doesn’t sound like much but it makes a lot of difference), but I’m going to postpone that till Monday next, as it’s late in the week now and I don’t like to double post too often.

Anyway, back on track :) great weekend with our friends, who introduced me to a whole new world of collectables (after previously getting us hooked on Pop Vinyls), and I’m now the proud owner of  Deathwing Stormwind attack down to £30 from £100, and Optimus Primewhich was also pretty heavily discounted but I don’t remember the numbers. I also picked up the next wave of Mixels, which Miss Vicky’s quest helper also introduced me to,  after becoming disillusioned with both the price, and duplication of ‘standard’ lego minifigs (as a reference, a lego minifigure is £2.50 but a single Mixel is £3.00)

The Warcraft Megabloks (and their ‘blind bag’ minifigures) are something that I will ‘collect’ as I played Warcraft in its many versions for years, and still dabble in from time to time. But the Transformers I suspect I will only pick up any sets that I particularly like the look of.

The upshot of this is that I will be blogging some assembly, and unboxing pictures when I sit down to these pretty big tasks, for a further diversification of this once staunchly wargaming based blog.

Fret not though I will still be posting updates for miniature wargaming and painting etc when it’s relevant, and photos once I setup a decent home lightbox.

 
For those of you disillusioned with the lack of tiny soldier mans in this post, fret not!

When I sit down to ‘mans’ (as my wife and I refer to the activity). I will be trying to cast up some components and create a bedroll type setup for my dragon knights, to give them the wandering knight kind of look, as they protect the herds of lizards, and perhaps eggs/nests, as part of their nomadic warrior lifestyle. 

 
I also really want to push through to completion with the  ‘wave serpents’ as they are oh so close to being ready to spray coat and get into the painting queue (which is currently empty as the Fire Dragons got stripped, and nothing else is spray coated). I am still really undecided about any kind of ‘rider’ for the dragons but I’m not sure how convincing it is that these beasts would transport troops, and direct the fire of their weapons under their own volition… Perhaps some kind of psychic link which they receive instructions over? I’m not sure yet but I want to test a few options for pilots etc. I will also be adding a lot of baggage, spare ammunition etc to the Dragons backs, as well as hand holds for the transported troops to add realism.

An interesting link into topics further up this blog is colour scheme for the dragons. A few posts back I outlined a vague plan for a sandy brown/red colour scheme for the army, and this is apparent in the Farseer and the Avatar painted so far, but when translating this to the lizards and dragons I noticed a remarkably familiar site which will be a nice nod to another hobby of mine :)

That’s all I have for now, well done for reading this far down!

Hopefully I can keep my promise of a DnD Monday blog this time round.

Thanks for stopping by
Lofty