Hello New People!

Ah, come in, come in! Don't worry, there are plenty of seats still left at the back. You'll have to excuse the mess, it's the cleaner's day off...

Yes, my blog has gained several new followers over the last couple of days thanks to a nice post on the site of Andy the Blog Pimp. As a result, I feel that my current level of posting is entirely insufficient! So, let's have another post. It's only a quick one I'm afraid, but here's a look at what I've been painting in the last few days.

First up, I'm still finishing off this cavalry unit for my Impetus 15mm Romans:

Charge!

Like most of my Romans, I've put these on a partially built up base, using foamcore to create levels and then covering that with filler, gravel and sand for texture.

If you're especially eagle eyed, you might notice that the rider at the back has been repositioned. That's thanks to Pete the cyber bully pointing out that it looked weird as it was facing the other way, which caused me to look at it again, decide he was right, and change its facing before I finished the base. This constitutes written proof that someone did once agree with Pete, so that's newsworthy on its own.

While basing the Romans I found myself sat at my desk with nothing to do as various stages of the base had to dry, so I needed something else to work on. I opted for some zombies!

The one in the middle is called Dave.

These are Wargames Factory modern zombies. To be honest, they're not brilliant models. The detail isn't very well defined, and it was quite difficult to come up with different poses as one arm on each torso is sculpted in place. However, they were pretty good value for money, and with zombies you do want a horde!

I've started to (finally) paint these as I've been in a zombie frame of mind for a while - went and saw the (frankly disappointing given the brilliant book it's based on) World War Z movie, and the Walking Dead has just restarted on TV. I've also been working on zombie rules for my own skirmish game, Flashbang. I'm hoping to get a multiplayer zombie-based game of that going fairly soon, so I need to get cracking on the zombies!

I did find these fairly quick to paint - basically I gave them a base coat, one layer of highlights, and then slathered them in ink. A messy look actually works quite nicely with the undead, or at least that's my excuse. The one model here that did take longer is the soldier in fatigues. He's my first attempt at painting Multicam, and I think I'll be trying a couple more attempts at that before I finally get brave enough to tackle my Empress models. I think Multicam is worth a blog post by itself, so look out for that.

Pete put up an interesting post recently where he showcased all of his painted models. I like that idea and intend to do the same myself, as soon as I can make the time. Hopefully I can have that as my next post soon, watch this space!

I am still here!

I realise there hasn't been much going on here of late. Sorry about that! Unusually, it isn't so much that I just haven't been blogging, but more that I haven't had a lot to talk about. Recently, the weather has been nice and I've been toiling in the garden rather than picking up a paintbrush. This would be more impressive if the garden didn't still look like a demonstration of what the world will look like ten years after humanity has been wiped out, but never mind.

Eventually, the pressure built up too much, and I eventually did something. And here it is!

Actual models being painted!

It's a cavalry unit for Impetus! As you can see, I'm at the basing stage. This photo was taken while the filler was still drying, so I need to add some sand and gravel and then paint it. Also, because I've left the models so long before basing them, I need to touch up some areas that have got chipped while I've kept moving them out of the way and saying "I must base those" to myself.

Finally, here's an action shot for you:

Those four skirmishers are in some trouble now...

That's a block of my Romans in the process of coming down a hill to massacre Pete's Carthaginians last night. To be fair, Pete has played Impetus twice, and is still learning how it all works. It was a win though!