2022/2023 To-Do List

 

Hi folks,

In previous years my To-Do lists have been extremely optimistic, including far too many projects for me to possibly complete in a 12 month period. As a result, a bunch of projects from last year have carried over to this year. I have deleted a couple that aren't a priority anymore and included a couple of extra projects that have been bumped up the list. I am not quite sure what will be in my 2nd Edition Tyranid list yet, but you can be sure it will contain all of the classics.

Here's my list!

2nd Edition 40K

Legion of the Damned

Legion of the Damned Chaplain on Bike

Legion of the Damned Techmarine on Bike

Legion of the Damned Bike

Dark Angels

Ravenwing Squad

Ravenwing Attack Bike

Chaplain in Terminator Armour

Master of the 3rd Company

Callidus Assassin

Tyranids

1000 point Army List

9th Edition 40K

Dark Angels

Redemptor Dreadnought (DreadTober)

Hellblaster Squad

Intercessors

Infiltrators

Blade Guard

Talonmaster

Ravenwing Attack Bikes

Ravenwing Bike Squadron

Imperial Agents

Culexus Assassin

Inquisitor Erasmus

Iron Snakes

Whirlwind Scorpius

Iron Snakes Bladeguard

Iron Snakes Terminators with Thunderhammers

Orks

Boyz (with The Boi)

Nobz (with The Boi)

Warboss (with The Boi)

Deff Kopters (with The Boi)

Kommandos (with the Boi)

Squighog Boyz (with the Boi)

Objective Markers

Fortress of Redemption

Ammo Dumps

Age of Sigmar

Sylvaneth Dryads

Druanti the Arch Revenant 

Warhammer Underworlds

Grashrak's Despoilers

Skaeth's Wild Hunt

Elthain's Soulraid

BattleTech 

Jade Falcon Mixed Star

Jade Falcon Mixed 2nd Line Star

Ghost Bear Command Star

Ghost Bear Scout Star

Ghost Bear Assault 2nd Line Star

Foxfire Scout Lance

Foxfire Pursuit Lance

Foxfire Assault Lance

Foxfire Support Lance

ComStar Heavy Level II

ComStar Command Level II

ComStar Support Level II

UrbanMech

Daishi Widowmaker

Space Hulk

Blood Angels Boarding Party

Cypher

Genestealers

Objectives

 

To-Do List 2021/22

 

Hi folks,

My new hobby to-do list is enormous, just like the last one. With most* of my 2nd Edition Dark Angels complete, I will be shifting my sights to a classic Legion of the Damned army later in the year. Legion of the Damned were my first army, so returning to them and giving them some justice on the paint table (hopefully) will be very cathartic.

My 9th Edition work will be focused on finishing off my Dark Angels Crusade army "The Last of the Plains People". I have a lot of options for that army as it grows, so I will probably be adding things to my list just as I cross them off! I also have a Warglaive to do for DreadTober and several family projects to work on. My son is still painting Orks with me, though we have had a break due to other distractions.I have just gone with the flow with this, because he is so young, but yesterday he was gazing lovingly at them and said he would really like to paint some more. Wifey has also been waiting for me to help her base her Necrons, which we got a roller for from Greenstuff World. That's a post in itself, so keep an eye out for it.

I have a couple of Age of Sigmar jobs to work on just for fun, we'll see if they can be a palette cleanser at some stage. That includes a couple of Warhammer Underworlds bands that I picked up during lockdown (supporting those local FLGSs), which I am keen to play on the tabletop when this COVID lockdown ends. 

With Wave 2 of the BattleTech Clan Invasion KickStarter (that's more capital letters than one would usually put in the middle of words...), you can expect A LOT of Mechs getting painted over the next 12 months. I am absolutely NOT adding them to my pile of shame**. 

I have also kinda forced my best mates into playing some Aristeia with me, which is an anime styled, futuristic, eclectic, skirmish, gameshow, tabletop, miniatures, boardgame. I have two teams from the core set ready to go, including some alternate models for Musashi (the famous samurai of legend) and 8-ball (a fluffy kung fu panda). It is a highly enjoyable game to play, so hopefully I can include some battle reports on the blog.  

Of course, there will be projects that jump out of the shadows and grab my attention; there is at least one super-secret piece I will be working on when it reaches me from Canada, which I am very excited about. 

If you want to check out the full to-do list, just check the side panel, it will be there all year as I slowly cross off projects!

See you across the table,

Marc

* I still have a few tricks up my sleeve.

** Oh Crom, please don't let any of these end up in the grey tide.

2020/2021 Hobby Season Review

 

Hi folks,

At the start of this hobby season I wrote a monumental to-do list, with the hope that I would get a fraction of the things done. A lot of my energy was poured into the 2nd Edition Army Challenge, which has to be one of the best things I have ever done in the hobby. The camaraderie between the challengers is fantastic and the work being done is just amazing on a daily basis. As a result, a lot of my 2nd Edition projects have been finished. 

In October last year I helped run DreadTober for the first time, which was a great experience. My son even painted an Ork Dreadnought with me for the challenge, then proceeded to rip me a new one with it on the tabletop! I can't wait to do DreadTober again this year! Hopefully, we can get a whole lot of people onboard again this year and make some amazing stompy bots. 

I also participated in Monster March this year and managed to paint a Forest Dragon which has been sitting in pieces at the bottom of my bitz box for way too long. It is in my daughters little Wood Elf army now, which pleases me no end. I advertised the challenge on MeWe, which has a very small but lovely Age of Sigmar community, and Gav Thorpe decided to join us in the challenge. Sharing WIP shots with one of my teenage White Dwarf idols was surreal. 

Sometime during the year the first wave of the BattleTech Clan Invasion KickStarter arrived at my front door. This is so exciting to me, I cannot even... Anyways, I managed to paint most of the Mechs I received in this initial delivery, including some for my good mates.

A little later in the year Sydney went into a harsh lockdown due to COVID19, which we are yet to come out of.  I challenged myself to finish a crusade army in this time. Quite a few of those models are on my to-do list as well, but I have not been quite as successful in getting them finished. Having said that, the preparation work is solid, so I am pretty sure I will get some wins on the board next season! There have been some significant exceptions to this though, which I will show at the end of the post. I even managed to get a few cracking games in before the lockdown curtain fell. I am really looking forward to some more gaming when it is safer to do so.

Overall, this season has really been a blast! Here are some finished projects:

2nd Edition Army Challenge

DreadTober

Monster March

BattleTech Clan Invasion KickStarter

9th Edition 40k

Tomorrow a new hobby season dawns! A new To-Do list will be forged! New badges of completion will be thrice blessed and sanctified! With it will be plenty of projects carried over from this season, as well as plenty of newcomers... if you can ever really call vintage Legion of the Damned figures "new"...

See you across the table,

Marc

Hobby Diary Part 7: Ghost Bears and Devastators

 

Hi folks,

I haven't had a whole lot of energy the past couple of weeks; family, health and work issues have been rolling me in the foam. It hasn't all been bad, some things have just caused me to be ridiculously busy, but that level of business is unsustainable. This weekend is a long weekend in Australia, as we celebrate the Queens birthday, and all I can say is that I have spent most of my time sleeping on the lounge with dogs on top of me.

At some point last week I managed to finish paining these Ghost Bear mechs from the first wave of the Clan Invasion Kickstarter. Both the Adder and the Nova are over-gunned Mechs, which I love; if you want to unleash hell to your own detriment in a game, these guys can dish it out. The Nova has 12 Extended Range Medium Lasers, with only enough heat sinks to fire half of them. But if you want to fire all of them...

The Adder has two Particle Projector Cannon "head-cappers". It can also fire just one comfortably, but I'll happily ride that Heat Scale a little higher if it means taking down Mechs twice its size.

For the 2nd Edition Army Challenge I have been tinkering with a combat squad of Devastator marines with heavy bolters. That has mostly involved converting arms to fit them, as they didn't come with any ($50 on ebay only buys you so much vintage 40K!).

 

I'm fervently hoping that today's mindfulness will provide me with some energy to get on with some painting tomorrow.

As a side note, I have been participating in the Push up Challenge for the past couple of days. This is an event held in Australia, which raises money for critical Mental Health services. In short, I'm trying to do one push-up for every person who committed suicide in Australia in 2019 (3318 in 25 days) to raise money for Lifeline. Lifeline is an emergency counselling hotline, which serves over a million people every year, but struggles to meet demand. If you feel like donating to help me support this cause, of just feel like following my progress through the challenge, check out the link below: 

The Push Up Challenge

See you across the table,

Marc

Hobby Diary Part 6: Smoke Jaguar Command Lance Finished and Gaming

 

Hi folks,

Towards the end of last week I added the finishing touches to this command Star of Smoke Jaguars. Wade and I had previously worked on them together, to get the majority of the painting done. Wade then took them hoe and added some more washes, gun-barrel weathering, gloss varnish on the laser lenses and mud bases. I finished them off with some laser cut foliage and the tiniest decals I have even used.

We celebrated the completion of the project by getting the guys together for a game, pitching the Command Star against a Star of second-line Clan mechs. Space Cowboy and I took the Smoke Jaguar's and managed to destroy two enemy mechs and a tower. We even managed to win the initiative roll (...once...). At the end of the game though, the simplicity and efficiency of the second-line mechs was a telling factor. With 6 ER PPCS between them, and Space Cowboy miscalculating his heat dissipation capacity the whole game for his most powerful unit, we were never really in the game competitively. We had lots of laughs though, which is a win 😂.

 

See you across the table,

Marc

2019/20 Hobby Season Review

 

Hi folks,

When I was preparing for the 2019/20 Hobby Season I was coming off the back of a pretty hard year, so I wasn't too ambitious with my To-Do list. I was a bit disenchanted by 40K, so focussed mainly on aiming to get my Space Hulk set painted. As you all know, this year really has been balls. I spent most of summer in Tasmania, which was amazing, but when I came home I always had one eye on the horizon and the other on my Bushfires Near Me app. With some time spent working from home due to the pandemic, you would think that there would be some extra time for painting, but it just wasn't the case. As a teacher, I found my workload more than doubled; things that I could usually do quickly were taking me a lot longer. Despite that, I did manage to do a whole of bunch of stuff I would have never imagined when I wrote my To-Do list. And, no, I didn't get my whole Space Hulk set painted...

Here is a trip down memory lane:

Warhammer 40K

Iron Snakes

A big year for my Iron Snakes, I managed to finish a 2000 points army that included some new Primaries figures. Squad Damocles, a 10 man Intercessor squad equipped with boarding shields, was completed for Squaduary.

Imperial Knights

For DreadTober I completed the second knight of my Walls of Ithaka detachment. This is "Theseus" Ferrum Fortis (Strong Punch!). 

Dark Angels

For Armour in April I finished this Landraider Excelsior, just in time for it to be relegated to "Legends" (or whatever they call those things now). Ah well, still a cool model, and very likely to be used in my casual games.

2nd Edition Army Challenge

Recently I have embarked on a 6 month challenge to complete a 1000 point army using 2nd Edition sculpts. I have opted for a classic Dark Angels scheme, starting the challenge with a repaint of two of my oldest figures; a Deathwing Master and Dreadnought.

Age of Sigmar

This year I managed to finish some figures that my daughter had chosen for herself. I also caught the Age of Sigmar bug and dove into Sylvaneth. To help motivate me as I started I entered some painting competitions along the way, all at my local Warhammer store. I won the Brushmaster title for the Treelord Ancient and the Kurnoth Hunters, with both the Kurnoth Hunters and my daughters Sisters of the Thorn featured for a short time on the Age of Sigmar Facebook group! Small wins, but they sure did keep me going during the tough initial slog through isolation. To be honest, the Treelord is probably my best work, it really, really, challenged me. 

Space Hulk

Well, this was meant to be the focus of my season. If you have managed to get to this stage in the post you can see just how distracted I was! I did manage to get the commanders done for each of the teams apart from the Fallen, which I painted the full team for. Calistarius, the Blood Angels Librarian was the real highlight, completed for The Jewel of July community challenge. The Broodlord was my Monster March entry.

Kill Team

I managed to speed-paint a H. R. Giger inspired Kill Team, as an alternative to my 4 Lictor murder list. I haven't tried it out yet, but I sure am looking forward to the Aliens quotes.

BattleTech

I know most of you are here for the 40K, and perhaps meander into Age of Sigmar like I do as well. But I also play a couple of other systems that do a great job of dividing my attention. With the delays to the Clan Invasion Kickstarter, BattleTech hasn't drawn my attention as much as it could have this year, but I still managed to paint a neat lance of mercenaries and a larger scaled piece for my mate Wade.

 

Phew, that's it, I think. 2019/20 has been crazy busy. I managed to get a lot more done than I ever intended, but I am still glad to put this year behind me. Tomorrow I will post my To-Do list for 2020/21!

See you across the table,

Marc