2011 Kickoff and Winter Painting Queue

A new year is upon us and the projects continue on unabated. I'm padding my queue a bit here by keeping it relatively small, but in my eyes certainly manageable. There's lots of other projects waiting in the wings, so let's get these wrapped up first.


1. Hordes of the Things Orc Army

I didn't realize until I finished the first leg of this 6mm army that I have a *lot* of stands of Orcs, especially for a game that requires only about a third of what I have. This gives me a *lot* of options to mix and match with and it also gives me two completely separate armies that can fight head to head at the same time. I came close to painting a different skintone on the next batch, but I think I'll just keep them the same and have one gigantically huge fantasy Orc army.


2. Some Sci-Fi Terrain

There's no excuse to not paint these. They've been built and sprayed with primer for some time. I intended these to be terrain pieces for 15mm battles, but they'll scale further up or down the spectrum just fine. I've got to get in more sci-fi games this year anyway, so why not crank out some terrain to go along with it?


3. Prehistorics

The last of the projects on the block are my prehistorics; cavemen and the Ice Age era critters for them to hunt and eat. I'm looking forward to this one, not that I'm not the others, but the figs look very cool and it's a genre that interests me a great deal as well.

That's it, just three projects in the queue to start out with. Don't be fooled though, there's a lot of stuff to paint up here and I don't see myself blazing through it either. The terrain should come together easily enough, but the stands of Orcs will end up being tedious if for no other reason than sheer numbers, and the prehistoric plateful of cavemen is deceptive, there's really a lot more there than you'd think waiting for the brush. Once these three projects are all wrapped up and complete there's more on the horizon, there's always more, without much planning ahead here's a quick list off the top of my head for the future:

Incoming on the H.U.D.

1. Space Orks (AE Bounty and 5150)
2. Pulp Figures (Strange Aeons, Chaos in..., etc.)
3. 15mm Sci-Fi Troops
4. Sons of Minos Space Marines
5. Basing and Finishing Touches on the Karman
6. Continue Work on 15mm FoW Brits
7. Deathwatch Marines
   
8. Exo-suits for 28mm Mercs
9. Tanks for the same 28mm Mercs
10. Dino-Marines!
    
11. Lord of the Rings Project
12. A Dwarf PC figure for our FATE RPG
13. Another Spring Garden
    
14. Imperial Guard troopers
15. Sci-fi Greatcoat troopers
16. A trio of Dark Angel rhinos
    

If there was one thing last year taught me it was that I need repetitive games under my belt with the same system. To this end, I need to try some different sci-fi rules well-suited to 15mm to find "the one". I'm looking for games that will handle single mini to a little larger than skirmish level. Having a solo option in there is also a big plus in my book.

Speaking of solo, as much as it pains me to say, I'll be looking at 5150 again. I've had an idea for some time of a pair of Space Ork mercenaries plying their trade across the galaxy and it's be fun to make into a serial here.

This will also be the year my daughter graduates from boardgames to some true tabletop gaming, I'm thinking we start with the Song of Blade and Heroes for some linked games. So overall 2011 has got some ambition to it already and it's just begun. Some of the items listed on the HUD are for projects, but others are just to get done because they've languished too long incomplete. I'm not saying I'll get to them all in 2011, but they're not going away, so whether it's this year, next year, or even further down the road...they'll always be there.

Long Overdue Orcs

It's one thing to have a bunch of miniatures in a box, or still in the package in storage somewhere, we all have those...some in vast numbers. It's another thing entirely to have a project sitting around on the launch pad, and by project I mean it has a definite purpose (as soon as it's painted, you're using it), and it's been sorted, glued on bases, even primed. All it's doing is waiting for you to paint it.

Thanks to the recent migration of Andy's archives over to a new blog format, all his older material is now in a user-friendly format. Reading back through the archives, I found this post, dated a solid five years ago! That's me, I'm the unnamed "buddy", and that's how long this project has been sitting around. Well, five years is long enough, and with the new year around the corner, I certainly didn't want to make it six!


Here are the latest minis to come out of the workshop here at Mik's Minis. Also, 6mm may also be my new favorite scale! I was able to crank out a full-sized Hordes of the Things army in just two evenings. For those keeping score, I'm counting the whole base as a single miniature in the 'minis painted' category on the right. If you counted the actual figures however this army consists of 58 figures overall, which sounds about like a regular 28mm army.

Hordes of the Things is a great game, and we've been playing off and on for about five years I'm guessing, though probably longer in reality. The rules play fast, are easy to learn but will challenge you in the long run to tactically and proficiently use all of the different types of units, of which there are plenty. You can also play it in any scale, so you can use your existing armies if you'd like, especially to give it a test run. The best thing is, the rules are free! If for nothing else, they make for a surprisingly entertaining read. There's a good site that sums up many of HotT's facets here at the Meadhall, sadly its predecessor, the Stronghold is no longer.

Above you've got a blurry photo from my not-too-smart phone, but here in the next day or two, as the holidays allow, I'll get a proper post or two up detailing my latest army. Five years is a long time, but maybe what my army was doing was waiting for a proper setting to maraud in, like the one we now have in Sarterra.

Hordes of the Things: Four Army Clash

Wood Elves and Grail Knights joined forces to eliminate a scourge of Undead and Barbarians that were running rampant up and down the countryside. The Elves and the Knights have shared a mutual partnership for night on a century and their armies have a lot of experience fighting alongside one another.


The Barbarian hordes and the Necromancer's Undead are a tenuous alliance at best, although it is rumored the Barbarians worship the same fell gods as the Undead. The two alliances clashed at dusk, the Undead fortress, a plane-shifting necropolis has just become visible. With the Necropolis in sight, the forces of good attack.

The forces of the Grail Knights, with Unicorn (magician) and Pegasus (aerial hero)

Knights square off against Barbarian riders and Mumaks

The Pegasus takes a dive, the Knights' aerial hero falls lifeless

When Gods attack! The Undead summon forth their colossal God...

...who is subsequently bested by the Unicorn and driven off!

The Wood Elves summon their own deity, in the form of a mighty tree

The Wood Elf God attacks the Necropolis (then we realized you couldn't do this)

The Tree God faces the Barbarian Mumak behemoths

This is one of those games that no miniature gamer should be without. Hordes of the Things is just a great, simple, easy-to-use, and incredibly adaptable game. Working in 6mm is great too because an entire army, all you'll ever need will run you twenty buck, thirty if you want a lot of options thrown in there. This battle took place a couple of weeks ago, with as busy as I've been however, it's just now going up, my apologies. I wish I could lavish a little extra detail into the report as it is, but my recollection is a tad fuzzy. Enjoy!

The Summer Painting Queue

I guess I will start doing quarterly "painting queue" posts. The spring edition was pretty successful, I look back at that and think, "Hmm, I painted those x32 Star Grunt II guys, and the rest of those Vikings, not too shabby..." But I can't rest on my laurels, nope!

1. Deathwatch

I've got tons o' DW posts already, you guys know what they look like by now. They're not going to paint themselves and the book is due out any time now. Time to get crackin'!


2. "Evil Ice Elves" Warband for Song of Blades and Heroes

I'm giving a shout out to my buddy Brian at Repple Depple here. He brought a box full of "freebies" to game night a while back, and many of those figs have found their way into the core of this warband. In SBH, if you've got quality troops, nine is probably more than enough. I'm going to paint them as a group, but then pick and choose according to my mood and have some options, such as a martial leader, or an arcane one.


3. Hordes of the Things, Orc Army

These guys aren't going away are they? It's a sizable Orc army, and really, shouldn't be too bad to whip into shape. I have so been dragging my feet on this one, ugh.

4. Pulp

No surprises here. Unlike the HotT army though, these pulpsters have not been around very long whatsoever. They will be fun to paint up, but I have a sneaky suspicion that they'll be making a queue comeback later on this fall if you follow me.

The Spring Painting Queue

Everyone loves work desk pics!

Well spring time is here, and as the flowers are blooming outside, the metal on the inside is stretching and yawning, awaiting paint. This could very well be the last figures I paint for the year knowing my pace! Here we go, in rank ordered goodness:


All the projects, in a sort of backwards order going right to left


1. Vikings

These are the last of my Vikings project which was one of my main foci kicking this year off. I've saved the best for last as you can see. We've got three 'larger than life' mythic/epic heroes and two more down-to-Earth blokes. The large fella with the shield will be the overall warband leader, the beardless hero in the red cloak his son, and the scary looking fella in the back with the huge axe will be some kind of doom metal harbinger. The fur cloaked fig on the far left will be the hero of the unarmored militia, and the remaining 'regular-looking' fig will be the warband's standard bearer. I've got a print out of a banner design for his spear.


2. 15mm Sci-Fi

Another of my foci for the year is 15mm sci-fi. We've done very little in this department unfortunately, but maybe getting these three platoons of Stargrunt II figs completed will be the push we need. Here I've got Japanese Corporate troops led by a squad of Kra'vak aliens. I'll be glad to get these done because they're the last part of a much larger army.


3. Hordes of the Things

Making this post I realized I didn't have a label for Hordes of the Things, meaning I haven't touched these guys since before I started this blog! It's been a long while. If you don't know this excellent game, check it out, it can be played in any scale or genre. Andy and I long ago decided on 6mm fantasy, and the above pic shows my Orc army. It's their time.


4. Pulp!

Rounding out the projects queue are all of my pulp figures I recently assembled and stuck on bases. These are very fun figs and I think they will lend themselves quite well to some light pulp adventures games in the future. Excuse the horribly blurry pic!

I guess that about wraps it up for the spring painting queue. There will be other mini-projects along the way, most notably is my squad of Deathwatch I'm doing up for the RPG (more on that tomorrow) as well as a few single figs lurking around here and there. I don't feel overwhelmed or buried, in fact, keeping everything orderly and neat has given me a boost in confidence. I won't get them done in record time or anything, but get them done I shall!