A Brief Endo-counter

I don't care what anyone else thinks, I like that title and I'm pleased with myself for having come up with it.

I've painted a couple more things! I'm still working on post-apocalyptic stuff, so first off, here's a command endoskeleton for Terminator Genisys.

That thing is either for communicating
with Skynet or scanning barcodes.

This is the first of the metal endoskeletons that I've painted, and I'm a bit ambivalent about it. One the one hand, it's a nice sculpt, it definitely looks like the murderous robots from the films. On the other, that attention to detail makes some parts, especially the wrists, are very flimsy - the arm holding the communicator bends very easily and I'm just waiting for it to break. We'll see how this goes on the table.

Second, a counter:

We seem to have a special on beans and cigarettes.

In my mind, this is part of a stockpile after the apocalypse. But it could easily also be part of a shop or something. It's from Ainsty Castings like so many of my resin terrain bits, and it's been sat around for a while so it's good to get it off the pile and potentially into use.

So here are my ever-present numbers:

Acquired: -8
Painted: 21

Zomtober part 3

Zomtober's third Sunday is upon us! Let's see what I've come up with this time.

First of all, I needed to follow the rules and get a zombie or survivor painted. I decided to go with a zombie this time, and found this one lying around...

Mmmnnnurrrgh.

I think this is a Studio Miniatures one. I'm fairly sure Kieron gave me a sprue of these, some years ago. I decided to try and give this one a "hospital" look. I think really it should have short sleeves for infection control reasons, but I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that this doesn't have much effect on zombie plague either way.

Second, for reasons even I don't fully understand, I painted a portaloo (port-a-potty for the Atlantically challenged).

No reason to think you won't still get
caught short after the zombie apocalypse.

This is one of a set of two that I got from Fenris Games at some point in the distant past. It's a nice enough little piece of sight-blocking terrain, and it fits zombies as well as anything else, so there you go.

Finally, it's time for another frustratingly inconclusive glimpse of my overhyped secret project:

I feel like the Mastermind theme should be playing.

If that doesn't key you in to exactly what's going on, then frankly, nothing will.

Right then, what's that done to the scores? Let's find out...

Painted: 158
Acquired: 160

Almost back at "no impact whatsoever", so that's going well!

A stocking filler of an update (oh God, that's awful)

Dreadful post title aside, I've unexpectedly got a bit of free time tonight so here's an update on what I've been able to fit in amongst the drinking and terrified shopping that accompanies December.

As Kieron has mentioned at Cheaphammer, we're aiming to have a game of Very British Civil War, which as of last week neither of us had any models painted for, or any rules. Kieron's already done a sterling job whipping some rules up for us to try out, and in order to be ready to play on Thursday night I've basecoated a band of Local Defence Force chappies, the Handsworth Volunteers.

To be perfectly honest, the paint job here is extremely basic, doesn't do the models (a mix of Musketeer and Great War miniatures if memory serves, I actually bought these at Triples 2010) any justice whatsoever and will need more work doing to it for me to consider the models finished. But for the couple of hours I've spent on them, I'm pretty pleased, they'll certainly be usable for some playtesting this week. And this is after I painted the uniforms the wrong colour and started again!

In the first photo you might have spotted the back of a rooftop stairwell creeping into frame. This is a test piece for my next planned project (and one of my goals for the month, I've really wandered off track with that), the Sarissa Precision buildings. 

The extremely generous and helpful Andy (Loki of Loki's Great Hall and Terra Firma Studios fame) was kind enough not only to advise me what colours to use for painting brickwork, but also to go out and get some of the paint mixed up for me. I wanted to give this a try and the bricks on this piece seemed the ideal place to do it.

The results here are very nice, if I do say so myself. It was actually lucky that I got some advice here, because as I was warned, the paint looks too bright when it goes on, but dries to a nice realistic brick colour.

I'm now ready to tackle the buildings themselves, but there's a lot I want to do there and I want to have time to do it properly, so that's waiting until I'm away from work for Christmas (4 more sleeps!). Expect a post in detail about that when I get to it, which I'm looking forward to probably more than is healthy.

Because I wanted to work on the terrain but I'm not ready to do the buildings yet, I've got started on the furniture. I've got loads of this stuff (and I've just bought some more, it's a disease) and I've started most of it at once, but these bits are quite close to being ready:

That's a safe on the left, a photocopier on the right, and in the middle an office cupboard. What's worse, the fact that I took a photo of some furniture, or that you're now looking at it? 

For the cupboard, and the other wooden furniture, I'm trying to get a wood grain effect by deliberately drybrushing in a haphazard sort of way. It seems to have worked ok, we'll see how it looks when I have a lot of the stuff standing together.

Ideally, I'd have some thought to finish this post on, but since I don't know whether this will be my last post before Christmas I'm not ready for the well wishes yet....

... ah, let's go for it. Merry Christmas everybody!