Barnstorming

A quick post for a quick paint job!

I'm still working on bits and pieces of terrain for the 7TV day in July, and the latest is this cheeky little number:

A "ramshackle barn" from Renedra. This was a very easy thing to build, and possibly even easier to paint!

True, the doors don't open, and I've glued the roof on. I think this will be needed to hold it together, but it does mean that putting anything inside is a bit trickier than with MDF buildings.

Still, nice easy model, looks decent, so that'll do.

Right, tedious accountancy time...

Painted: 16
Acquired: 77

Back in the Saddle

An incredibly short time after my last post, I'm back again.

This time, I've brought horses!

clip clop clip clop

These are Warlord Games French WW2 cavalry. I've had them lying around for more than a year, so getting them done really is taking stuff off the pile.

These have already been used, but I'd not done the bases at that point so they weren't ready for the big screen.

As is traditional for a new unit, they were wiped out without inflicting a single casualty. But I think they did at least distract some Germans from the objective, so that's probably something.

To be able to use these (or at least, to be able to have them dismount), I also needed to paint these...

These came with the mounted models, and when I bought them, Warlord had a weird sale on where this pack was half price, but the alternative sculpts were full price. I therefore bought three of the same set, and since they're one-piece metals, you end up being able to do this...

Battle of France: the musical

So I can now field the start of a chorus line in Bolt Action.

Painted: 15
Acquired: 77

Getting on with it

We're more than a month into 2020 now. Given that I'm trying, yet again, to paint more models in the year than I acquire, you would expect me to start out by painting a lot and being restrained about gaining new stuff. 

I've not done that. 

Still, I've managed to get off the starting blocks, so let's have a look...

That'll probably buff out

It's a truck! Specifically it's a truck with a big dent in it. This is part of a Walking Dead scenery set that I got thinking it would be useful for post-apocalypse purposes, so it's slightly odd that I'm not using it for that. Instead, this is going to form part of my planned table for this year's Wargames Illustrated 7TV day in July. So will lots of other things, so I really need to get on with it.

Ok then, so I've only painted one model so far. That's ok so long as I didn't get loads of new ones, so it's something of a shame that I've received a few things I've ordered recently, and ended up with 77 models going onto the pile.

Still, it's a start, things can only get better from here, et cetera.

Let's kick off this year's scoreboard then, just for the look of the thing:

Painted: 1

Acquired: 77 

Best get back to it then...

Finally Returning to the Blog

Errr... hi.

Yeah, it's been months. But I've come back, yet again, so here it is - another new year, and another attempt at self-justification as I realise I failed to achieve what I was trying for.

Anyway, I'm getting ahead of myself.

First, here's a series of things I've painted since I last managed to get myself sufficiently organised to post here.

Starting with...

Post-apocalyptic cultists!

I really like these models - they're from Crooked Dice, and I got them as part of the 7TV Apocalypse kickstarter. The detail on them is great, which made them very easy to paint. I've gone for greens and browns on them so that I have the option of using them as Nurgle cultists for my vaguely planned 40K 7TV adventure at some point.

Next, it's...

Probably going to be used as a panzerschreck...

Last Levy Germans! 

I had these on the painting table from the 7TV games day - I'd had the idea that some of them could work for Pulp, then did other things anyway. But they were still sat there, and it was easier to paint them than to find something else, so here they are. 

There's the multiple rocket launcher thingy above, then the "shooty round corners" krummlauf:

Probably use this as a sniper or something...

It can shoot this way too!

Then a couple of Volkssturm for good measure:

It's not easy to see in the picture, but the one on the left is in a firefighter's uniform.

Clearly, inspired leadership will be needed here, so let's throw in an officer for good measure!

A nice model, and I'm actually fairly happy with my paint job on him, so it's a shame that for some reason I couldn't manage a decent photo. 

Last among the defenders of Berlin are the Hitler Youth:

Sometimes a miracle occurs and I manage a photo you can actually see

Always good to have a unit I can feel guilty about any time it takes to the table. Possibly the worst part there is that the Bolt Action rules only let the NCO have an SMG, so the little guy in a sort of scout uniform must be the NCO... ugh. I have a vague idea that these might also work as some sort of pulp kids... thing as well. 

Anyway, moving on...

It's Terminator time again. Black Friday threw up a few Terminator models for dirt cheap at Wayland Games, so I grabbed what I could. So there's the T-1000 you see above...

...and John Connor, leader of the worldwide resistance, and last best hope of humankind. These are actually pretty nice resin casts, so it's a shame that my painting has done them no favours whatsoever.

I also got Arnie on a bike, but I've yet to do anything with him.

While I was at it I also painted a resistance soldier with a grenade launcher - he'd been sitting in my paint station for months for some reason, so it was nice to get him finished off.

I've also managed to paint a random apocalypse survivor that was hanging around my paints as well, but for some reason I've failed to get a picture of her. 

I also thought I'd already blogged about the tyre barricades and ammo boxes I painted a few months ago, but I can't find any evidence of that - you'll have to take my word for it.

So, I've basically lost track of where I've got to since I've been failing to post here for such a long time, but let's try to figure it out.

*counts on fingers*

*takes off socks*

Right.

I think this is what I've ended up with:

Acquired: 164

Painted: 81

That's... not great. I mainly blame Fortnite - my son got obsessed with it over the summer and I was forced (forced I tell you) to spend most of my free time playing that in order to win him stuff rather than paint things.

Also, I really do want to get better at posting on here (as I said a year ago!). I think I need to come up with a way of taking decent photos at the point when I finish painting, and then get a post up sharpish while I can still remember what I've done. 

Will any of that actually happen? Probably not, but it's good to have goals, or something.

Happy New Year!

On yer bike!

A quick post, but I know everyone out there is definitely on tenterhooks to see what I've done in the last couple of days. So here you are...

Vrooom!

It's a WW1 motorcycle messenger!

This is another model I've had lying around for a long time, that I started painting while I was waiting for the 7TV Pulp box to arrive. It's part of a pack from Great War miniatures that I picked up years ago when I first started VBCW.

Parp parp!

I've deliberately not flocked the base in the hope it'll look like it's on a muddy road. I'm not really sure how well that's worked though, so I might give in and flock it later.

Anyway.

Here are some numbers! You'll notice that one of them has gone up slightly since last time. Huzzah!

Acquired: 126
Painted: 37

I'm only 89 behind now! This is getting close now.

More Perishables!

I said last time that there would be another blog post about pulp models, since I approached the 7TV Pulp day by just painting anything vaguely appropriate I had lying around and then figuring out a cast later.

Time to make good on that threat. I give you... the extended Perishables!

Today's photography problems include
very poor lighting and a somewhat greasy lens

In order to spin this post out into something that seems vaguely worth writing, here are the models I've added...

A saboteur

Pretty sure this chap was an Artizan Designs model, from some packs I got when I was first playing Bolt Action and using partisans. I never really had a use for these models before now, and having seen the 7TV Pulp rules... I still don't.

This model pairs nicely with this one...

A man with a plunger!

The detonator bloke comes from the same pack, and feels like it might somehow be more useful in a game, but so far that hasn't come up.

Moving swiftly on...

Lovely boater

I also got this fella when I was building up the partisans and needed people with pistols - at the time I decided he was just too gangster-y. The hat in particular is a nice touch on this model, but unfortunately I can't remember who made it.

Next!

Two guns!

This is a Pulp Miniatures figure, from a pack that I think I got (again) for the partisans. The photo is terrible, but I was trying to do this as a 20's US uniform, since I imagine the Perishables to be a mishmash of ex-military people from anywhere.

From the same pack there was also this amazingly-square jawed pilot:

Have you seen a plane anywhere?

This photo is even worse, but if you could see him you might be able to tell that I've tried to give him a British uniform. I also have a WW2 RAF pilot that I got from Partizan a while back, who is pulling an almost identical pose. I might paint that one too at some point, presumably as someone to capture or something.

Then we move onto someone strangely sinister...

*shudder*

I think he's from the same pack as the pilot, and is fiddling with a knife in a very creepy way. He's another one that I've not yet worked out an appropriate 7TV card for, but I'm sure I can crack that.

Last but not least...

The Brigadier! He's another freebie from Partizan, joining two others that were already in the cast.

So, we've made it to the end of a series of very low-quality images. What's that done to my painting scores?

Acquired: 126

Painted: 36

I'm only 90 away from breaking even, so that's something. Not something good, but something.

Introducing the Perishables!

Well, it's been three months since I last was organised enough to post anything here, but now I have something to push me to do it - a new cast for 7TV, to coincide with the arrival of 7TV Pulp!

To pull this together, I raided my lead pile to find anything vaguely appropriate. I had the idea of creating a band of mercenaries in the mould of The Expendables, but set in the 1930's - so a variety of uniformed and non-uniformed cast members, but all with a military theme. 

I also got slightly excited at Partizan, and bought a pulp miniatures film crew for reasons that don't necessarily make sense.

Once I had that, and a billboard kindly donated by Kieron, I was pretty much duty bound to make a scenic base to keep it all on. And thus, the Perishables were formed...

 All of this was kicked off by the announcement of the Wargames Illustrated 7TV day for this year, which was held last weekend at Wargames Foundry.

To be honest, pulp isn't a genre that I've ever been particularly excited by. So it really was the strength of the 7TV Apocalypse day last year that drove me to pick up the Pulp version of the game and pull a cast together for it.

This year's was, if anything, even better, so I'm very glad that I did! We were each assigned to either Hydra or the Strategic Scientific Reserve to give an overarching theme to events. As a group of hopeless goody-goodies, the Perishables were on the SSR side.

On the day I played three games. The first, against Adrian's cultists, saw us scrapping over the components of a potential super weapon. Particular highlights for be were a scuffle between two spies on a cliff top, that was eventually resolved by my man shooting his opponent in a the back, and my completely forgetting to collect one of the objectives that I'd carefully deployed in front of until the end of the game.

Largely though, this was an object lesson why it's better to bring a gun to a knife fight if possible, as my rifles gave me something of an edge against cultists holding scary blades. I was thus able to snatch 4 objectives to my opponent's 3. All of which would have been more impressive if I'd actually won, but thanks to my failure to seize the McGuffin, I didn't.

Second, I was up against Matt's mobsters, attempting to capture a secret super weapon production facility, deep in the jungle. It's fair to say this went somewhat better, as a timely cliffhanger card combined with the gangster's positions to allow my rugged veteran to mow down half of the opposing cast in a single turn. I reduced Matt's mob to just the crime boss  (and I probably could have finished him off too if I'd remembered to steal the scene) and grabbed the lab too, but I can't claim this was due to tactics so much as pure blind luck at the right time.

The third and final game was where things got serious. The super weapon had been assembled, and the Perishables needed to destroy it before it could rain terror onto an unsuspecting populace. I was up against Simon's very nice gangster cast this time, and Simon made good use of cover to form two firing lines that covered every possible approach to the weapon. This made things very difficult, but I was able to combine stealing the scene and heaping almost all my plot points on one action to stagger through with the rugged veteran and plant the bomb. The mob boss made a stab at defusing it, but couldn't pull it off and so the Perishables saved the day!

The terrifying super weapon is just visible through the trees...

So, my results were a loss that I thought I'd won, and two wins that I'm not at all convinced I deserved. That's the wonder of 7TV, and part of the reason I enjoy these days so much. The game doesn't lend itself to competitive tournament-style play, so mostly people just revel in the glorious daftness of it all. It's a lot of fun.

Also, there were a few freebies and I managed to win some prizes by coming something like 4th in the overall rankings (there were a lot of prizes). After a bit of horse trading with Kieron, who also had some prizes, I ended up with 66 new models, so that's not going to have helped my painting totals enormously.

Incidentally, we'd been asked to provide a super weapon, and I struggled a bit for ideas. This is how I ended up with the terrifying spectacle of the board with nails in it...

Fearsome!

I wanted to get started early so I actually painted several more models than you see here. The rest are awaiting bases, but I've cunningly left a few spaces on the scenic base that I can slot them into. So that will be my next bit of work here, which you can expect to see here in another three months or so. 

Right then, painting scores. It's been months, so you'd expect a fair amount of movement in the figures, and indeed that's what we find.

Acquired: 126
Painted: 29

Right. Something of a mountain to climb there. The remaining pulp figures should help a bit, but it looks like I need some more quick to paint but numerous stuff to try to bring this under control. I'll see what I can do!