Off the wagon...

Erm... I have fallen off the painting for wargames wagon this month... gah... I am disappointed in myself.

However, I know I'm a display painter at heart* so have cracked on with a little something else this week - Poppy-come-lately by Statuesque miniatures. Statuesque is a small British mini company by Andrew Rae, and he does a good range of girlies with various weapons in various styles at some very reasonable prices... most definitely worth a gander!

And here we go with a couple of quick photos:

Waddayathink?

I am painting her for the most recent Best of British showcase/competition over on Platoon Britannica - Rae of Sunshine. The deadline is the first of February so I need to get my arse into gear... there's nothing like a deadline to get the juices flowing!


*although that doesn't mean I wont be revisiting the Grey Knights in the future, its just that two straight months of painting grey is tricky for me!

Guess what just arrived...

More on this later!

Puppykicker's first 250 - Ravenwing

Here are some picturs of Phill's 250 points - some rather nice Ravenwing bikers

And some photos of our models together - 500pts of marines - not that many all things considered!

An interesting Kickstarter - Beyond the Gates of Antares

As you may have noticed, every so often I post about a Kickstarter on the blog. There are so many of them these days that I try to be quite selective with what I post and this one appears to be something a bit different again. I've pledged on board games which are complete and just need an injection of cash for production, I've helped fund the retooling of miniatures in a new medium, and pledged on new miniature lines to add to existing companies.

However, this Kickstarter is for a wargame which has yet to be created - the backers will be part of the whole creation process. It is called 'Beyond the Gates of Antares'

This game has quite a high pedigree already with people like Rick Priestley involved in the rules and Kev White and Karol Rudyk involved from the miniatures side. There are a whole host of other people on board with this including 'friends of the bodgers' Golem Painting Studios - head over to the Beyond the Gates of Antares kickstarter and have a look for yourselves.

The next 250pt batch!

some initial pics of 250pt block #2

Grey Knight Terminators

and a Finecast (!) Jokaero

I've still got a lot of prep-work to do on these guys, this month is going to be a real challenge! Part of me wonders whether I should just buy Kaldor Draigo and paint only one mini this month :)

But I will give these guys a go and see what happens!

I managed to get some photos of my first 250 with Puppykickers 250 points of Ravenwing and will endeavour to get some photos up soon :)

Heresy Dragon Unboxing

I like dragons, a fact that I am not ashamed to admit. Tracy, on the other hand absolutely LURVES dragons. It makes my infatuation with those winged scaled monstrosities seem positively trivial. She has loads of different dragon models ranging from the tiny to the immense, from 80's classics to modern monsters and they all live in a large box together cohabiting peacefully (for the most part).

Imagine my excitement when we found out that Heresy Miniatures were producing a humongous dragon to go with their infamous huge demons... oh yes, much excitement ensued. Then there were the WIPs Andy put up on the Forum of Doom... enticing us to want the beast more. When the dragon was put up for pre-order we just had to get one...

Each... 

Now, that was a good few years ago and the dragon has grown considerably in that time - bits have been resculpted and then replaced and the beast ended up larger than Andy could possibly even cast. That has meant it has taken a while to get to this point, but finally the dragon(s) arrived on our doorstep. Tracy opened it and I photographed the whole thing. Here it is:

The box BIG box

That's an A4 sheet in  there and a little thank you from Andy

All the bits - check!

Paperwork removed, we have sweeties!

Lots of styrene chippings

And finally some pieces of the model - wings and spines

We dig deeper into the treasure trove... more minty green styrene

More goodies... and some metal bits!

Dragon in all its glory!

The metal bits - claws, tail, horns and tongue!

2 Sets of arms - more about that later!

Lots of pretty pieces in that box. On to that 'two sets of arms' thing - this just shows how Andy at Heresy Towers is still modifying the kit to make sure it is as high a quality as possible. The arms originally came with the hands attached, but the claws separate (upper pair), but Andy wasn't happy with the consistency of the resin casting so he has subsequently cut the hands off and re-cast them in metal.

The kits will not come with to sets of arms in general, but Andy sent me both to have a look at and I must say, the metal hands are a much cast than the resin ones. It was a good decision by Heresy and appears to be something they are continuing with. The size of the beast has been a real issue, but I think they are nearly at the point where they will be able to spin cast some parts in a plastic/resin hybrid, cast some parts in resin, and some parts in metal. This should allow them to speed up production and get more kits to those who already have them on order, which ultimately means more dragons for everybody... and this one is awesome in the true sense of the word!

Smaug eat your heart out!

Some better photos of the first 250

Right, I know its the second month of the challenge, but I just wanted to post a few more photos of the first 250 points. I've gone back to the blue-white gradient background and have been tinkering with my camera settings and am quite happy with the results.

So, what have we got?

A close-up of the Justicar

A pic of all the Grey Knights together

Inquisitor Avicenna in all his 30mm glory

The line-up showing all 6 of the models in this first 250 points

Coming up... photos of the next 250pts!

Against the odds....

Despite all the conflab about 'end of the world stuff', we find ourselves stepping into 2013 without a hitch.  2012 was a very busy year for the Bodgers; we attended a record number of shows and met lots of 'new' people. I say 'new' because they were people that we'd been talking to online for years in some cases, and we had the opportunity to meet them for the first time this year :)

Avicenna had an awesome painting year, both in terms of output and achievements. I'm sure his highlight of the year was his success at the Crystal Brush in Chicago where he came away with a Gold and a Bronze. His close second was probably selling his first sculpt which was put into production by War Griffon Miniatures - Gladiatorc is one of many great minis Martyn sells so check them out! Success continued at Euro Militaire where he got first bronze medal. Big smiles all round!

Sadly all that awesomeness was counterbalanced by my extremely poor performance for 2012. My head was stuffed full of great ideas as usual but I just couldn't get my butt into gear to make them a reality.  I did make a start on a GW model - the really cool Nurgle Chaos Lord - he's almost finished but not quite! I also bought some lovely Dark Eldar to get involved with the Tale of Four Painters malarky - they are still 'work in progress'.  *sigh*

Back onto more positive stuff.....having met up with fellow painters around Devon during 2012, we starting getting together at various locations and got stuck into painting, jovial banter and general fun times. Having met Andy at the Plymouth Model Show earlier in the year, he invited us down to the Giant's Lair, which he runs with a couple of friends, to help out with judging the painted armies in their tournaments. It was great fun and cool to see so many well painted armies. It's become a regular haunt for us now, although we haven't been there since October due to other commitments. But we will hopefully be there on Saturday 7 Jan, so if you are in the area pop in and say hello.

Something else that we did for the first time during 2012, was attending some painting classes. Avicenna went to a Golem Painting Studios painting class with Mike & Ali McVey and Tommie Soule and he came away with lots of great advice; proof that no matter how good you are, you can never learn enough in this hobby.  Avicenna obviously made a good impression as he was invited back to help with a master class, along with other talented painters, to help people with their Golden Demon entries. I went along too with the intention of sitting quietly in the corner, but Tommie wasn't having any of that and I ended up sitting in and getting some actual painting done (shock horror!). We then both attended another class in November, this time at the actual location of Golem Studios itself - an NMM (Non-metallic metal) class by the painting whiz Tommie. He has a very unique take on how to paint NMM and it certainly works. Even I got passable results :)  The day was topped off by an awesome meal at a local Korean restaurant with friends that also attended the class.

All in all 2012 was great from a hobby point of view - despite my lack of paintiness - and I hope that 2013 is much the same, although with a bit more painting for me ;)  And just to prove I did something - baking and modelling in perfect harmony :D

Happy New Year to you all and may 2013 be a creative, fun and happy year for you all.

Toosh x