Year in Review 2017

It's been a good year.

A triumphant return to the hobby, gaming, painting and blogging all making good progress.

There have been highs and lows though of course. Lots of excitement for the new 40k, only to have best laid plans go to waste. Partly due to best man/wedding planning and other commitments, but also just because of a general lack of time. Malifaux is a lot quicker to setup and play for starters, and rather than taking up an entire table for 40k, we can play two games of Malifaux on the same size table so no one gets left out.

Really quite pleased with some of the progress made with modelling though, just need painting and assembling of new boxes of modelling to catch up.

Planning activity for the month ahead was a double edged blade. On one hand it was a good way to see what needs doing rather than just flitting from WIP to WIP, but on the other hand it felt like a bit of a rigid way of doing things, with no variation. I don't quite know what this will look like in future iterations, but I want to combine some element of  'I want to work on this' with 'This needs finishing for X reason' to avoid burnout, while still making progress.

The end of the year had markedly less progress made than most of the rest, for a number of reasons. The aforementioned wedding/best man stuff, holidays & kitten, as well as some recent personal issues. Hopefully this week's painting progress is a good sign of things to come though :)

All in all, it's been a good year for hobbying. I might make a post about hopes for the next year but that just seems like it'll be a list of things that might not then get done, so a monthly target setting system seems a better idea.

All the best to you all for the new year and for the last time:

Thanks for stopping by
Lofty

Femme Fatales

My wife and I christened our new Gaming table setup over the holidays as well, and I had finished putting together/magnetising/undercoating my Titania crew on Xmas day so I decided to use them in our game.

Titania was a lot of fun, and very different to any of the other masters I play for any faction. I can't help but feel that I would have fared a lot better if I had read the cards for new models & upgrades before playing though...

In general, I seem to not have strats/schemes in mind when I'm picking a crew, rather just picking what I want to use, so there is often a bit of square peg round hole feel to my play. I also struggle to think what my opponent might be trying to achieve whilst also trying to achieve my own poorly understood objectives. We are hoping to play a lot more games though. It was certainly a lot less fuss setting up/packing away having everything all in one place and the table already sorted and ready to go.

I look forward to more games with Titania, and might pick up a couple of the newer models to use with her once I work out what will suit her well.

Xmas day evening was also the first day in a long time that I have felt like painting. I decided to make a start on Titania after enjoying the game with her, and wanted to include at least one of the Infinity models I need to get ready for the first game, so I picked the only one who probably doesn't need a second coat of blue armour which is the Oznat.

I've been heavily inspired by a thread on the Infinity Forums, as well as a blog on the Combined Army, and I wanted to try and include the dark purple from the Umbra Samaritan, and some of the colour choices/recipes from the Morat blog.
I'm not the biggest fan of the outcome of my own painting but I think that's relatively common amongst gamers. I think I have a tendency to overcomplicate things and could probably get some decent results by following the example of the 'Games Workshop method' of basecoat wash highlight, instead of trying to emulate people like Dr Faust who I never get as good results as despite trying different things to get thin layers.. This all depends on neatness though and it isn't something I'm good at. Painting more can only help this so hopefully this year will see some improvements :)

Thanks for Stopping by
Lofty

Fresh Air

I promised that I would get some airbrushing done over the break. I tried talking myself out of it for various reasons like the time taken to set it up, finding all the bits and bobs, etc. In the end I managed to see through my own weak excuses and got everything plugged in, sorted and ready to go.

Although it's still a temporary setup, and goes away again after use, the booth & compressor setup easily and without a great deal of fuss to be honest.

The newer of the two airbrushes works just fine with whatever needle/nozzle combo it ended up with, and in general is a more pleasant tool to use than the first cheap brush I bought.
I wanted to at least make a start on the Morats, and after touching up the coat of black primer with VMA Black, I went ahead and primed a mix of VMA black Primer and VMA Grey primer from 45 degrees to help with shading. I mixed this originally for the Titania crew models I wanted to include in this session. I then basecoated the blue I had picked out for some of the armour panels on the Morats and used the rest on the Gorar from the Titania box before the heat cutout on the Compressor stopped the whole thing short.

A couple of learning points from the whole thing. First being that if I have a list of models which I want to get done, with relevant colours, I can be more efficient. The amount of primer I had mixed was more than enough for what I wanted to get painted so I was looking for more models to undercoat in order to not waste it.

The second is that I want to get 'proper' airbrush versions of colours which I will use often through the airbrush. the dilution of blue I used for the Morats seemed fine on them (although it maybe wants a second coat) but when I used it on the Plastic Gorar, it seemed to run off a bit? this is possible due to using flow improver rather than airbrush thinner/water but isn't ideal nonetheless.

All in all, a successful attempt, and promising for future uses. I don't think the airbrush I have is really suitable for anything other than basecoats really, or my use of it isn't at any rate. I want to speak to my Infinity buddy at work when he is back off leave to see what his airbrush is like :)

Thanks for stopping by
Lofty

Needles and Haystacks

I wanted to sort through the spare needles and nozzles I have for my cheap airbrushes, thinking I'd use the calipers I bought to help identify them as which size.
Long story short, I ended up getting quite muddled. the 5mm needles were easy to identify as they are massive by comparison to the other two pairs. the 2mm/3mm are almost identical though and I am only half confident that I have them separated out properly. I was under the impression that the entire needle would be thinner or thicker, to measure with the calipers, but it seems only the taper changes.

Anyway, I have a needle plus nozzle in each brush, and based on how cheap the components are, i'm not sure that .1mm will make a  huge amount of difference.

Maybe I'll eventually have enough practice to buy a branded one at some point. I am hoping to be able to put them to use on Infinity models over the long break, and at least be part painted for the first intro game I have arranged with my work friend. I find myself increasingly tempted by models outside of the Morat sectorial, and Umbra Samaritans/Legates etc are just too nice not to paint! They also go well with the Batroid TAGs which I definitely would like to paint up and play with eventually too.

I'll be doing a year in review hopefully next week, and a look forward to plans for next year :)

Thanks for sticking with me thus far, and as ever -
Thanks for stopping by
Lofty

Seasons Gamings

We started a tradition last year to meet up with friends and play Malifaux around Xmas. We were at Element Games on Sunday to do just that :)

I faced both a new opponent (master) - Ironsides and a new opponent playing Pandora.

I took a fixed Justice list to both games, mainly to check out her new upgrades and the Death Marshall recruiter, and also because I was honestly expecting to face a lot more rezzers but I lucked out and drew the two opponents that weren't playing Rezzers :p

I did teach my Ironsides opponent to fear the Lady, and downed her in two attacks through the non charge bonus on her great blade plus the bonus flips from the Swordmaster upgrade. The red joker on the second damage flip sealed the deal but was over kill at that point :p

Pandora was hell. I have some really un-fond memories of playing my friends Pandora crew when it was his first master, misery, web weaver, sorrows. All that fun stuff combined with some daft placing on my first couple of activations made this a real chore to be honest. I won't say much more other than that I need to learn to block LoS and not have models too far forward when they don't need to be. Play the long game lofty :)

I also got my required models primed on Saturday, and kept working on the Raicho, including a bit of a treat working on his base.

The Press mold for the base is still quite tricky, and the picture doesn't really show it turning out better than I expected. I'm still not really a fan and for the first time in a long while I'm tempted to buy some bases for miniatures, as I don't think I can continue this method but want to maintain the hex pattern bases. I added a small fan, and two resin plugs from Zinge industries, connected by guitar string, and lowered a section of the base as I have seen this done on some bases available to buy and really like the extra dimension of the base.

I originally planned to grab some infinity stuff at Element games, and save the postage, but I couldn't quite bring myself to add to the pile of unpainted miniatures in the end which I guess I should be pleased about :p

Looking forward to getting started painting again over the festive break, so watch this space :)

Thanks for stopping by

Lofty

The Living Infinite - Carbon Dated

I've set a date with the guy at work for our first lunchtime intro/refresher game. This means that I need to get some specific models ready by then, which helps me focus rather than doing random bits of random miniatures when I sit at my desk :)

January 4th

I'm pretty much going to be taking the starter set for the first couple of games, with hacker/TAG added later as these each have specific rules to learn in addition to the standard stuff required to play the game.
All that is left to do currently to get them playable is to pin the weapons onto the Vanguard models. Hopefully though, I can get some paint on them before starting to play. I've been thinking alot about a colour scheme, and I think it will look good, close to the stock scheme seen in this picture:

I want to go with the grey and dark blue, but without the red accents. I like the stripe detailing and I'll use Orange for that. As for the glowing orbs on the armour (energy source? no idea really) I'm looking forward to some Airbrush OSL. To be honest, if I can get the grey/blue done with the airbrush, the rest of it should come along poretty quickly :)

I broke apart the Raicho the other night and started scraping out all the olkd superglue from joins and removing mold lines. I will be re-pinning and airbrushing in separate parts, so hopefully the airbrush is easy ebnough to use under the skylight in the new attic study, with the booth hose venting out of there :p

I managed to salvage the old wooden boards from our old makeshift gaming surface, and it'll certainly work as a game table until I have the money/time/motivation to sort something nicer/more permanent.

Thanks for stopping by
Lofty

The Living Infinite - Aggressive Expansion

A picture is worth a thousand words

After a lot of chatting about Infinity with the guy at work who plays, and talking about some intro games in the new year, I decided to post on the forums about what I have already and what a 'shopping list' would look like to make a usable force.
After a quick look on ebay, I found this little lot which has some of the stuff that was on my own list to buy, and some of the stuff that was on the recommended list. £120 retail for £50 so I consider that quite a find!
I'll be cleaning it all up and re-pinning & basing over Xmas :)

In other news, the great table fiasco continues, after getting out the Malifaux mats to test the new tables finally and realising that the two 3ftx3ft mats on the 6ft (as advertised on the product page) over hang at each side....
Checking the listing on Amazon again, and the '6foot table' is actually 180cm... I'm going to return it, and at a loss for any other options at this point that wont cost the earth, I'm going to re-try the old board table a friend's dad knocked together for me a few years a go, with trestles underneath it. The boards were a little warped before I moved them down the cellar out of the way though so I need to undo that damage plus the damage from the damp cellar for a fortnight...

I'll keep updating as the saga continues. I suspect the table will be fine once it's been wiped down and maybe varnished or otherwise treated. I just need to work out how to attache it to the trestle legs a bit more permanently than resting on top of them, or replace them with proper legs somehow.

Apologies for the slow updates recently. There's a lot going on to make it difficult to find time. New year should improve things hopefully, maybe before then with any luck

Thanks for stopping by
Lofty