There is no silver bullet

It has been 8 years since my return into the hobby, and along the way back I found myself repeatedly confronted with the urge to buy this or that product that would transform my painting results magically.

But there is no silver bullet.

No single product can magically take you from beginner to awesome painter. No matter how much advertised or praised (I´m looking at you #ContrastPaints and #Airbrush), no product can spare you the frustration of failed attempts and abortive painting sessions, where you give up after trying in vain to reproduce the results of highly experienced painters (most often professionals) with your newly acquired product.


If you never bought a hobby product because someone was praising it, if you have never been at least a bit disappointed in a purchase, you can stop reading here - this article is not for you.


But if you are like me, did that and find it hard to tread the line between hoarding products you´ll never use, follow me into the discussion of why there cannot be a singular magic product, why every tool you acquire will require you to learn and improve again and how that can be a good thing after all.

So let´s dive into it!

Blog Necromancy

Is it dead?
Well, it almost was...

Time to resurrect it with the power of necromancy!
 
Seems like I neglected my blog pretty badly throughout the last year and a half. Time to fix this. 
I haven´t been idle in 2019 and early 2020 - in fact, I painted and sculpted a lot of new stuff, just did not post it anywhere.

I´ve been very focused on improving my productivity, so much so that I did not take the time to document the results online. But I like the ability to look back on my blog and see what I´ve done and how my skills develop over time. Looking back is a healthy reminder that everything starts small and develops over time into what you see these days.

For 2019 I made a pledge to paint more miniatures. Long story short: 
I showed my best friend in 2018 that new years resolutions do indeed work if you make them specific and measurable - and he achieved and exceeded what he planned to do.
On New years eve, as it was time to find new resolutions and goals for 2019, he asked me what my resolution for the new year was, and so I commited to painting more minis and watching less videos on streaming platforms.

And so I painted or sculpted 401 miniatures (20mm+) or bases (15mm or smaller) that I did not present to you.On some of them I cut corners, some of them I painted to a very high standard.

I´ll try to update you on these achievements over the coming weeks.
Stay tuned!

Possessed by Wrath

 A few weeks ago I painted this chap to fill my saturday afternoon.

I didn´t want to use the typical red Khorne color scheme, but for the longest time didn´t have an idea. 

In the end I decided to use the faces on the armor to make things more interesting and give the miniature a theme: A human possessed by demons bound to the suit of armor he wears.

As such, the demon faces on the armor needed to look like they come alive while still appearing as part of the suit.

All in all, an interesting and fun challenge to paint this figure!

 

Lots of painted Taliban

Interested?  Get some at  www.enfilade.de/catalog/Taliban

Portugese Colonial Infantry - Now Painted

This Portugese Infantry unit was waiting on my workbench for a long time.
After more than 1,5 years I picked them up yesterday and painted them to a finish this morning.

If you want your own, they are available in my webshop - just hit one of the pictures, they are linked to the right spot.

Muscovite Reinforcements - Hidden Progress 2

Over at Crisis, I also grabbed some more Infantry - Field Dragoons.

Again, I mixed these with some converted Totentanz Miniatures and miniatures I sculpted myself. The result is nice, you can hardly tell which is which: 

Muscovite Reinforcements - The Hidden Progress 1

Back in November it seems like it stopped taking photos...

A lot of progress has been made on my Muskovites that I haven´t bothered posting - it is now high time to get back on track with these photos.

The first major step forward was the discovery of Fighting 15s  Medieval Tannenberg Range. As I spotted the Lithuanian Boyars, I knew I could use them as Russians with almost no conversion effort. Here they are, dressed up as my Skirmish Sotnia: 

In November, I went to Crisis and had my first eye to eye contact with the original Fire and Sword miniatures.  I always hated them from the pictures I had seen online, but on personal inspection, they didn´t look that bad after all.  Wargamer.pl  needs to amp up their product presentation on these, the pictures online are horrible compared to the real deal.  While they are not amazing - certainly not as good as Totentanz miniatures - they are good enough and certainly better than expected.

I mixed them up with the Fighting 15s Boyars and created a few more bases of regular Boyars.
I also ended up mounting most of the Wargamer miniatures on  AB horses, which are way better than the original pieces. 

On the Workbench - January 2018

This blog has gone silent again, hasn´t it?
Well, as usual when this happens, things have been going on behind the scenes but I didn´t feel much of an urge to take pictures, process them and put them online.

Still not feeling much like it, but at least I managed to take some shots of the various projects I have been or am working on right now.

Last week I finished these river pieces. I´ve long wanted to add some rivers to my terrain selection and finally pushed the project through after gathering some motivation and inspiration over the christmas holidays

I also worked quite a bit on Code Red (my Modern Warfare Ruleset) in the first two weeks of January. One addition to the Rules was stats for MRAPs for the Americans and Brits. 

During the work on the rules I felt the urge to add an MRAP to my collection.  There are some kits out there, and I might get one at some point, but I didn´t feel like spending money.  In the spur of the moment I remembered how other people achieve great results by scratchbuilding and started chipping away at some foam and plasticard.

  

After a few days, here we are with the scratchbuilt MRAP chassis. The CROWs is magnetized and can rotate. Right now I´m working on the wheels which are a bit of a challenge - too big, too small or too irregular and they start looking ugly.

 

On the sculpting front, I started another set of Special Forces -  these will be a Team in CQB-poses, one Pointman with a pistol (or out of ammo switching to his sidearm - you decide), a breacher with a Shotgun - and not yet started, an operator preparing a grenade or flashbang before the assault.

 

 Hope you enjoyed the small insight into my WIP stuff. 

I finished a lot more stuff in December that I did not take pictures of.  When my blogging motivation returns, I shall take some photos and put them up here. 

Until then, happy wargaming!

Tear Down this Wall! - Rebuilding Compound Walls

I had a lot of different wall sections for Middle Eastern Compounds that I made over the years -many different sizes, shapes and colors. Some mounted on tiles - my Afghan Village compounds for example - some single pieces.


I rarely used the village tiles. They turned out to be too inflexible and harder to transport and set up than necessary. All the different walls, compounds and colors didn´t really fit and they are not a good match with my new desert terrain mat.

So last week I butchered all the different walls and standardized them.

Work began by dismantling the wall sections, removing them from their bases. Most were on cardboard bases that had warped consirably due to painting, turning them into unattractive pieces.
I got rid of all the cardboard, slashed up the tiles into compounds and wall sections and began cutting PVA-bases.  The picture below shows how many walls were involved: 

Work was split over several days. At one point I had to take a break because I had a blister forming on my index finger from cutting the PVA. Fortunately I stopped soon enough and was able to continue working the next day when the irritation had gone.

After all the bases were prepared, I started mounting them. At that point, I had standardized their size, but you can still see the very different colors - Most of the walls were kept raw white and not even painted. Shame on my past self ;)   Terrain was never my strong suit.

After gluing, sanding and priming the pieces, I commenced painting and treated the wall sections with the airbrush.

After everything had dried, the sand received some treatment with drybrushing and washes. Finally, I added some flock and let all of it dry.  After a few hours of work, I had transformed all the ugly pieces to a new standard:

Ironically as I looked for space to store them neatly, I discovered more wall sections that I had missed on the first search. But I´m done with walls for the near future, they´ll either follow at a later point or find their way right into the bin.

Your orders, Sir?

By Fire and Sword requires order markers to play -  three kinds, to be precise:

• Move
• Charge
• Defend

Lacking these markers turned some of my first games into an ugly mess, as we had to improvise using paper slips to display our orders.

Being a cheapo, I refuse buying expensive tin order markes when I can build them easily. After our latest game with paper markers I decided it was time to prepare some proper markers.

These are pretty simple if you know how they are made.
The base are my usual synthetic cork pieces cut into slices - you might as well use metal, plastic or coins, doesn´t matter.
The symbol on the marker is a slip of plasticard cut into triangles and rectangles, which I then used to build these simple symbols by gluing them onto my base.  Then they got a treatment of oxide paste and a bit of gravel on the symbol-side before they went into painting.

Done.



Of course orders aren´t the only thing I´ve been working on. I also completed the last base of Cavalry to add another 3 Boyar Son bases to my force for our game scheduled tomorrow.

As these troops are not exactly high performers, I also prepared some casualty markers for my Muscovites. These were a bit more work than the orders, as I sculpted these from scratch.

I actually tried the Tony Barton tile technique (read more about it here) using oven-baking clay for some of them. For casualties that worked quite well - which prompted me to take the experiment one step further and try a full figure.

Read more about how that went soon ;)

Lurking in Broken Ground

Broken ground is some very useful terrain in a lot of settings. As my terrain still sucks compared to the figures I have available, I recently invested a minor sum into extruded pvc-boards and started leveling up my terrain.

After a lot of cutting, carving, gluing and flocking, my broken grund pieces are ready for the battlefield and will provide some nice scatter terrain.

And here are some potential occupants of the Terrain:  Some Servant Cossacks - a dismounted base and a horse holder base.  Again, the AB Napoleonic Horses are doing a great job! I just added a saddle and boom:

The Northern Lion - Sweden joins the fray

As usual when I start an Army, it doesn´t take long until I start a second faction to provide enough figures to play a game even if my gaming compagnions cannot field their own minis.

With my recent Fire and Sword adventure, I´ve decided to add a tiny Swedish Force - though I tried to cheat a little by making the Reiter units suitable both for Russian and Swedish Service.

This way, I only had to paint a few bases of Dragoons/Musketeers and a Command Unit. For a Start, the Reiter squadrons would be dual-use for my Muskovites as well as Swedish Service.

Here are the Dragoons: 

The Swedish Commander - I have to work some more on th Banner, it´s a freehand design and needs a bit more shading and highlighting. I´m going to rework it as some point once the Command Unit has earned some renown.

And finally, two Bases of Reiters.  I added some beards and painted the coats in colors that would be suitable for my Muskovite Force a well.  The Swedes will get some dedicated units later, right now flexibility and economy is important as I am trying to paint them to a nice standard.

The Wasting Warband

And so the warband gathers to plunder and kill, their presence announced far beyond the horizon by the gutwrenching stench they carrry.

I hope you enjoyed this little special week of Nurgle models.
If that was too much fantasy for your taste, I´ve got good news: I´ll be presenting some new 20mm figures soon.

If you liked all that Fantasy, I also got good news: More is on the way, I much enjoy painting these models and I´ve got more in the pipeline, with a slightly different focus. 

The Ironclad

Clad in corroding armor plates, some Champions contain their bodies to prevent guts and rot from spilling all around. They carry armor not just for the sake of protection - layers of rotten flesh and nurgles gift are providing resilience far beyond any conventional armor - but for mobility.  At a certain level of decay, armor becomes less encumbering than carrying none. 

Especially if demonic strength provides power and endurance of unimaginable plenty.

Legions of Decay

The endless Legions of foulness accompany the great plaguelords as they scour the lands. Their presence spreads terror, for their biggest weapon is invisible and deadly: Nurgles Gift.  Once contracted, you are given a terrible choice: Serve and replenish the unending legions or succumb to the terrible symptoms of the scourge.

The Legions are growing stronger. Soon, they will be among us. Steel yourself for the inevitable battle.

The Insatiable

Driven by insatiable hunger this Champion of Nurgle marches forth to slaughter and consume the mortals, with tentacles stuffing their bloody remains into his belly.

Wobble

As the minis look so much better on a dark background, I used the opportunity to take decent photos of the already finished Blightkings when I had the equipment all set up for the Plaguebearers.

Some of you might know them already, but I find it remarkable to see how a different backdrop and a good camera (with the right settings figured out thanks to some good tutorials online) makes all the difference.

So again from the Mist of the Chaos Wastes emerges the first Chosen of Nurgle to spread pestilence among the living:

Stay tuned for more of these improved shots  :)

Walking Rotbags

I´ve long been looking for a Fantasy Skirmish System that allows me to use the limited number and mixed factions of Fantasy Figures on my shelf - most of what I looked at so far was not to my taste, mostly because the forces involved where too big and I couldn´t muster a coherent force.

So, despite my concerns that it might be too simplistic, I decided to risk 7€ by buying the new release of the Warhammer AoS - Skirmish version, hoping to field a small warband of 3-5 Minitures in a Fantasy Skirmish Game.
As I wanted to bring my lovely Nurgle Blightkings I ordered a set of Plaguebeareres with the rules and added some cheap infantry choice to supplement the heavier Lord/Heavy Infantry style Blightkings.

Of course this also offered the opportunity to practice some more speed and batch-painting using airbrush techniques and faster painting methods than I use on the larger or more complex models, which can be very time consuming.

The Plaguebearers where simple and organic enough to use mostly airbrush, washes, drybrush and only a small amount of manual brushwork to work out the highlights.

And so I was able to produce the first batch in comparatively little time to a nice standard.

Three more are on my painting table still waiting for the detailling and highlighting after the washes :)

Fueled by Chaos

Time for another picture from my recent photography session.

This Bloodletter is a few months old - the idea was to try something different from the  usual blood red scheme you always see, so he got a somewhat tzeenchy look.
The big experiments on this guy was the effect on the hand, the blade and the OSL-look of the glowing eyes. 

 

Can you see how he fuels the sword with his daemonic powers, flowing from his arm into the blade?

 

Tank Busters - 15mm Sherman Firefly

A few months ago I receieved two Sherman Firefly as a gift - I believe the intention was to get me into 15mm WW2.

They´ve been sitting on my painting desk and someday I grabbed them and gave them some airbrush treatment because I felt like using the airbrush and these were suitable models to do so.

Of course I had to finish them up after getting them halfway done, so here I am with two 15mm Sherman Firefly.

I don´t want to get into 15mm WW2 - I just painted these for the sake of painting.
They´ll probably be sold off at some point to finance some new minis or equipment :)