Sunday, 2 October 2022

Clearing the Backlog (Aug-Sept '22)

 Hey all

It's been another skipped month, I'm afraid. But this means that I have plenty of newly painted stuff to unveil.

First off, in mid August, I was attending a local event. For this, I was using my Easterlings and so thought that I may as well finish off the few left in my painting pile. I had got these amongst a job lot of metal Easterlings, when bulking out my pike blocks.

Unfortunately, at some point the swords had snapped at the hilt and so I had to repair them. I did so by using a little green stuff to make a ribbon, tied around the blade to give it extra support as I glued it.

Next, I went to sort out the banner, it's a lovely model showing the quality of the old metals.

After banging out all the warriors, I just needed to do Brorgir for the event, my last Easterling hero to finish. He took me longer than I had expected, but was still finished with time to spare.

All that was left to have every Easterling model that I owned finished, was the remaining four Dragon Cult Acolytes, which I promptly got onto. They are some really characterful models and offer some interesting options on the board.

Now, that the Easterlings were all finished, I had to prepare for the Warhammer World Team Championships. For this, I was taking Thranduils Halls alongside a beary good ally...

I'm sorry, I won't do that again.

The first issue that I had, was that Grimbeorn's axehead had broken off, but by shortening it a little and creating a male/female joint on the head and into his fist. It made a great seal, sorting it out perfectly.

My next issue, was that despite having two weeks, in which I was on holiday leave for one, there was a small unexpected bump in the road. This small bump being my unwell son, so my week off was dedicated to looking after the little man.

With a little panic, I managed to bang out the man model during a few nap times.

Then with a good push during the evenings, after bedtimes were sorted, the bear form was also finished alongside. I tried a new approach of putting a little Ironbreaker into the eyes for the pupils, to give the reflective eye look.

To then add a little extra to the overall appearance, I also added some of my very old school, bitty, granulated flock to the logs and rocks to give them a mossy look, helped by the green wash that they had had.


With the Beorning finished, I just needed a handful of elves to be done, with a week to go. First, I decided to bang out the archer for a nice, easy start to get me into my stride. I matched my old colour scheme which was very green heavy.

Another issue came up around this time, as I realised that while I had equipped my Mirkwood Cavalry with shields, the models didn't come with them. I didn't have a lot of time so needed to wing it into new territory. 

Ordering some blue stuff from Element Games, as soon as it arrived, (well after the first episode of Rings of Power) I shot off to the post office one Friday morning and collected it. Quickly pressed two Mirkwood elf shields into it and the next day had my new green stuff shields made.

For anyone who hasn't tried blue stuff before, it is honestly much easier than I expected, Youtube is your friend for a quick How-to.

Three days later, now that the little man had recovered and was back at nursery when I had a day off, I managed to get them all sorted and was so pleased with the results.

This left just one task to be done for the Team Championships, to create a banner for my Palace Guard spear. This I did by simply taking some paper, cutting it to size and wrapping it around the shaft. I then painted it black for a basecoat, to avoid having to respray and repaint the entire model (I only had two days left). 

The idea that I had for the banner design was to base it off of the Mirkwood shields, filling in the background with a rich green. I put in the base layer of Steel Legion Drab, then added the details in Golden Griffon. Washing this in our favourite, Agrax Earthshade and then highlighting the design again with the Golden Griffon. This pleasantly surprised me as it only took a couple of hours and looked great!

For the rest of September, I had a lot of difficulty getting any time to paint in. But eventually, one Friday evening, I saw that the Battle Streams in Middle Earth channel was going live for Gamling week. And guess who had a Bannerless Gamling, sat in a box from an MTO 2/3yrs back, and no painting deadlines to meet?

This was my last bit of painting for the two months, but I was so pleased with how he came out. I may have to do a Warg Attack theme sometime, just to use him.

And with that, I finish August and September's painting logs. I don't think I have updated on totals for the year, so here is one. I am now sitting on 68 models for the year and have managed to bring my total of unpainted down to 379, significantly lower than at the start.

In October, I am painting some 3D printed Rhunish War Drakes for the Strider Cup and intend to also get my last two Mirkwood elves done. If there is still time, maybe also work on some Dwarves.

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