Ogres, beasts, evil stunties, executioners and ships!!!

Aargh!  Time, once upon a time I had more of it!

Never mind I actually do pretty well with what time I have!  Including managing to get a week of days off work!  Normally this would mean I sit down and force myself to get a whole bunch of stuff batch painted!  Not so this time.

I stepped on the bathroom scales in the first time in ages!  Probably a good thing.  I have known for years that I was over weight but, was happy to float 6kg's between 88 and 94kg's.  However 97 was too much for me so decided to do something about.  My wife and I have both decided to change our eating habits.  Instead of having a plate full of meat and potato, we are now actually going by serving sizes and not snacking as much throughout the day.  So far I have dropped 3.5kg's and am feeling better than I have in ages, so it seems to be working!

So other than that hopefully life changing decision, I have been doing some hobby.  First of all the Executioners force I plan on building on has been on hold for a couple of reasons.  First I would like to see what 6th edition of 40k brings.  I would hate to spend a bucket load of money on an army that I couldn't then use in a game.  Second I am struggling to find a paint scheme that I am really happy with for them.  I am not sure the metallic looks is right for the force I want.  So I will continue to try and find the schemes that I like best then probably ask for some opinions and go from there.

I do want to try and push my painting skills in the meantime, so I had a look at the Warhammer Forge side of things.  Now when I started playing Fantasy, my friend always took Chaos Dwarves and I always took Dark Elves.  These are the games that I remember the most fondly!  We stacked the board with terrain and had difficult and entertaining battles!  It was also these early games that got me hooked on taking musicians!  My friend always feels the points are better spent on an extra trooper or 5 throughout the army, than upgrading one model.  As fate would have it, this means that I win most combats by the musician bonus after a tight drawn round!

I have also started painting my Dreadfleet, erm, fleet!  Had my love of my Beastmen army rekindled by a post I read on Bell of Lost Souls., and also started work on some Ogre Maneaters to finish off my 3k army of them!  Below is a work in progress of the first.

I will add some waves around body, as if the are emerging from water.  Also for line of sight reasons I will always have a separate full sized ogre to swap in if people are trying to target them!

And to top it off, the Blood Bowl league I am a part of has kicked off for another season, and I have the choice of which Tournament I will enter this year and which team to take as well as build a custom board to fit with the team!  Last year I took a the "Phlorida Gators", a Lizardmen team with "The Swamp" their home ziggarut stadium.  I ended up in the top half of the final standings both overall and in casualty count from memory.  But more importantly I took home the best custom board medal!  A feat I hope to do again soon!

The centre tower doubles as a dice tower as well as being a nice focal point.

Anywasy, Once again time has caught up with me and I need to go do the funniest daddy in the world routine (my kids are rather sheltered apparently).

A New Start

Hello, and welcome to the start of a new adventure into the world of blogging!

First I guess I should start out with a little about myself.  I am a 30 year geek, happily married to a closet geek with 3 wonderful children.  I have been playing GW games since I was about 10 years old, starting with the old Milton Bradley games of Heroquest and Space Crusade before moving on to play Blood Bowl, Epic then eventually second edition Warhammer Fantasy, before moving on to second edition 40k.

Over the years I have collected far too many little grey men and most aren't painted!  Now there are various reasons for this.  To start with I am inherently lazy! Not a great excuse and something I am always trying to better myself with.  Secondly my eyesight is terrible, so bad in fact that when I was 18 my ophthalmologist said I had the eyes of a 40 year old! Couple that with an essential tremor (my body produces to much adrenaline causing my hands to shake) and it makes painting challenging!  Finally the biggest killer of getting my armies painted now days is time!

Now that isn't to say I don't paint my armies, cause I do!  In fact in terms of painted miniatures I have more in my collection than some of my friends who I started gaming with!  I admit I will never win any painting awards, and on close inspection people will notice that not all the detail has been painted (I never paint eyes for example), but if my army looks cohesive and finished from the other side of a gaming table then I am happy with the results!

So why did I start this then? Umm, I dunno really!  I guess I hope to use this blog as motivation to actually finish projects, to share the hobby that I love and occasionally brag about my children or the rare game that i actually manage to win!

Now recently I have decided that I want a 40k army to spend time on and actually paint to the best of my ability and to try and push my painting further than I have before.  Also seeing as this is going to be a long term project, and not a force I want to get onto the table top quickly, I am going to go with an almost all Forgeworld marine army (all on nice resin bases, most likely from "Back 2 Base-ix" as I have used them before and have never had issues with any of their products, plus their Aussie)

The big question was, "Which Chapter?"  This had me stumped a little.  I knew I wanted to use the MkIV, V, and VI armours, as well as the old Rogue Trader style special and heavy weapons!  The problem was that none of the original legions jumped out at me.  I didn't want to do one of the traitor legions, I don't like Ultramarines, neither of the Angels appealed to me.  Raven Guard?  I painted my AoBR marines as Raven Guard, but do I want to do them again?  Nope.  Imperial Fists? Well may Dark Eldar have tons of yellow on them so something else maybe?  A successor chapter then?

The only successor chapters that I really like are from the Badab War, what with all their cool camo and stuff, but I had already done that 5 years ago!

I had done these Executioners back in 2007, but my painting has improved since then!  It was settled, I will revisit the Executioners!  This time I will use use them in the new Forgeworld colour scheme.  Since they are now a 3rd founding chapter, if I put my Veterans in MkV Heresy plate and the other guys in MkVI that should work.

So I have nutted out a list that includes the IA:10 Chaplain, Pedro Kantor, Sternguard, Tactical Squads and some Vanguard, all riding around in Rhinos and Razorbacks.  Still 6th edition is not fr away now according to the winds of rumour, so collect small and slow and if it needs to change I won't be fully committed to a certain course. 

So there you have it, a new blog, a new long term plan, and hopefully soon some test pics (or pics of something else if I get distracted!)