Status Update and IPMS Thornbury photos [Pic heavy]

A little update on where things are at.

Its been a little quiet here recently, mostly because I recently acquired a rather bigger painting project.

Namely, an entire flat

Regardless, there's an alternate history Flames of War tournament being run by Vanguard at the start of next month for which I need to put some new units together, so there'll be some photos of them as they are completed.

For now, here are some photos of last months IPMS in Thorbury, which seems to have been overrun by gamers rather than modellers (not that I'm complaining...)

Might as well use my expensive new phone for something right?

 Someone wrote up various new races for WFB and plays them at 35mm or thereabouts. It is glorious!

Pretty sure this was here last year...

An interesting Cthulhu-esque RPG-ish game with great production values that I ultimately didn't buy into.

These guys wouldn't let us play with their toys...

There was a painting competition for wargaming figures, which, last year only had three entries. This year, however.

I was mostly there to showcase All That Remains and you can nip over to the All That Remains blog for pics.

Thing a Week 19

Some Jeeps for the purposes of 6pdr towing. Not going to lie, I didn't put that much effort into them as they'll rarely be deployed, but I've paid the points for them for todays list, so why not right?

Still though, quite happy with them.

Thing a Week 18

And thus yellow platoon was born. It's an airlanding platoon, but it will - of course - be known as yellow platoon due to the marking on the back. It's short a PIAT but I'll be cannibalising one of the freefloating ones from the HQ teams.

Really looking forwards to D-Day gaming this weekend.

Thing a Week 17

Finally finished half of a Para MG platoon, spurred on as I was by our D-Day event to be held in June.

It's a fugly picture, but I'm really quite happy with them.

I've transitioned to using full strength PVA rather than the very dilute stuff I also have, and it's come out rather shiney. Strange, but not visible in this picture.

Thing a Week 16

Zombies!

These Wargames factory zombies were originally put together for a d20 Modern campaign that ended over a year ago. I've finally finished (and for that matter, started) painting them.

As they're zombies, I didn't want to sink too much effort into them so I tried following the tutorial found here. I've got to say, I'm not seeing the advantage of Army Painter quick shade, which I invested in. I didn't see as dramatic a darkening in colour as I was expecting, and the end effect seemed to be little more than a shinier, stickier, more brush ruin-y version of a devlan mud wash. Also the colours  used made them end up looking rather green - despite being dark brown and beige - where I was aiming for the baked reddish brown of The Walking Dead zombies.

Also, as with Wargames Factory models that I've painted before the definition is a little ropey, and they seem extra susceptible to blobiness.

So overall, not the prettiest job I've ever done, but what the hell, they're zombies.

I'll be leaving zombies for now and moving on to other things, but I think I'll be trying out other techniques later in the year. I believe there is a miniature painting tradition called zombtober where you spend October painting zombies for no readily explained reason; maybe I'll give that a go.

Thing a Week 15 - Flak Track

With Salute behind us we return to our irregularly scheduled non-All That Remains related painting, and with this captured German AAA half track, I have emptied my paint queue for the first time in 2 years.

It's a little yellowed in the light, but I'm relatively happy with it and quite pleased about the Union Jack I sculpted onto the bonnet.

I've read online that photoing miniatures on a white background isn't a good idea as cameras refuse to focus on the figure, which would explain why recent shots have looked a little diffused. I thought it was my camera failing, turns out it was the background. I'm going to cobble together darker but still clean backdrop for the future.

The paint queue is now full of zombies...

Thing a Week 14 - TESCO

"TESCO"

TESCO is part of my project to make some characterful figures from the lead pile while simultaneously making a selection of randomly generated level 1 characters for Darwin's World, for easy use, if I ever actually manage to get a game running.

We found TESCO squatting in the ruins of one of the Ancients' food markets. We named him after the store we found him in, filthy and alone. It's not like he's ever told us him name, or ever will, or will ever say that much. He's a mutant of some type, but there doesn't appear to be anything wrong with his voice-box. I think he's just never learned to speak.

Talking of being improperly socialised, he has no bowel control, gets inappropriately possessive of anything he considers his and wont stop following us. That's how he became part of the group. It's not like we asked him to come with us, we just blundered into his squat, catching him unaware, and after a tense stand off in which he hissed, growled and threw unmentionable substances at us, we went our separate ways. A few days later we became aware that he was stalking us.

He is fast, and very good at hiding himself. It took us a week or so to get him to come out of the shadows, another week to join us by our camp fire, and another two to get him to put on some trousers. Although that seems to have been done out of imitation rather than anything else

His most prised possession is an Ancient rifle. He clearly has no idea of how to use it, or even that it has any function other than a club. We briefly debated trying to teach him how to use it, but decided that it would be too dangerous for everyone involved. Frustratingly, he refuses to part with it.