Dreadtober 2019 Part 4: The baby squiggoth is DONE!!!

...and just in the nick of time! Truth be told I didn't think I'd have the time, but in the end I did what any responsible 40-something would do, I put aside adulting for a few hours and instead said:  fuck it, I want to paint my miniatures!

And promptly did so.

lol, anyways...I'm really happy with how it turned out. Technically, this still needs another coat of matte varnish followed by 'ard coat over the eyes, tongue and entrails that are hanging out of the trunk. However its raining and with 100% humidity outside, and I don't want to risk the varnish fogging, so that part can wait till this front passes thru in a couple of days. 

Anyways, here are the completed pics:

Whatever that huge skull belonged to has been dead long enough
for the local flora to grow through it, and die as well.

Just a close up of some of the requisite human skulls.

An overhead shot of the entire model, base and all.

Thanks again to Mordian7th for organizing another successful Dreadtober!

Dreadtober pt. 3: The clock's a'ticking...

PROGRESS!!! 

Yeah its been an awful month. However Saturday I was finally able to get some hobbying in and tried to make up some lost time on my baby squiggoth. That way, when the weekly round up posts you won't be seeing my prior post (again) for the what....3rd? or is it 4th time?

Anyways, I'll just show my latest WIP pics and then get back to it as I have less than a week to finish this project all up!

All inked, now for the dry brushing!

Have opted for those being entrails, lots of
blood for the blood god paint to come on that trunk!

This wouldn't fit on a killa Kan's 60mm base, so I stole the
ginormous one that came with the Venom Crawler. 

The literal chaos of my creative process...

Dreadtober Part 2

o/

A bit light of a blue for da Deff Skullz, but I'll darken up before the end...

Just a quick post for an equally short amount of hobby time this week. I managed to steal and just  about an hour or so this afternoon to at least try and achieve some sort of minimal progress on my baby squiggoth for Dreadtober. Honestly, its the only hobby time I've had all week, and the next isn't looking any better at the moment. 

The zig-zag looks a bit more consistent on the ass-end.

Nonetheless, the baby squiggoth has achieved the infamous 3-color minimum. I like the base idea for the blue/black hull, though it needs a bit more refinement. It doesn't have to be perfect though since as I've mentioned before, it is the Orks we're dealing with here. 

Eh...not too far off from my initial idea. Though this is a bitch to do amidst the hull's detailing and recessed gribbly bitz. 

Am hoping I can get more done this week, otherwise it'll just be a late month crunch-time run I guess. 

Dreadtober Part 1

.....aaaaaand we're off to a slow start. Typical.

The turret is no longer stuck facing sideways!

It was a pretty busy week, however I did manage to get the turret situated, meaning it now swivels freely. It was a bit laborious sawing off the insert that went into the hull with a little hobby saw. I did end up with one gouge due to getting a bit crooked in my sawing, but I caught the issue before it got too bad. 

Its ugly but it works...mostly.

Still lacking green stuff, I instead just cut a few small squares of plasti-card to fit the square in the hull (where said insert had gone previously), and then glued 'em in, one atop the next until they sat flush with the top of the hull. Once dry I made an 'X' to find the center and drilled in an 1/8" hole to fit a magnet. Likewise I did the same with the bottom of the turret. 

Unfortunately...it doesn't line up on center as I had hoped/planned. But hey, its the orks right? Right. Of course, the more astute amongst you may have realized that that's all but an admission that I can't line up a turret any better than an Ork/grot. To that I say: Thanks for paying attention Neverness, now sit back down and be quiet!

just as planned....

Additionally...not only is the turret now out of a proper center alignment, but my counter-sinking didn't go quite deep enough meaning there was an appreciable gap between the turret and hull. Thus I cut a rectangular, plasticard 'ring' to fill the gap. With that taken care of, all is now primed and ready for paint.

Lastly, I'll be putting this on the ginormous base that the venomcrawler came with (necessitating the purchase of another for the crawler) as this wouldn't fit on a killa-kan's 60mm base. This week is looking ugly, but I hope to have some hobby time at some point...maybe. :-(

Dreadtober is on approach!

So I'd best get crackin'!

My last effort for this community event came in the form of my old (and now long since sold) Salamanders' Dreadnought. For 2019's entry, I'm hoping to actually finish my Baby Squiggoth which is essentially a 'counts-as' Killa Kan. 

RAWR!!

I hadn't touched it in a while due to some serious gaps and the need for greenstuff (my mortal enemy) to remedy them. However I never got to the FLGS to buy any, nor did I order any either as I didn't want to pay for shipping charges on the stuff. So, I instead set about trimming/shaving down the interior portions that lock the top and bottom halves together and in short order, the gaps were a thing of the past and I was able to glue the kit together. 

What to do about that gap? hrmmm...
Also note the dud anti-tank rounds stuck in the forward and side hull!

That said, there still is one awful gap behind the head that I may yet need GS to fill. Its probably all the more noticeable after I made a bad air bubble look like battle damage. Yay me. 

Shall I paint the stuff coming out of the trunk as ropes? Sausages? Entrails? Oh, and yikes! Look at that gate I missed on the back of the turret!!

This ought to fit on a 60mm Killa Kan base...well, maybe.

There is still a bit of clean up on the sides as well, but nothing too, too bad, mainly beneath the ropes on both sides. The turret itself still needs the most work however. For whatever reason, it was designed so that it would sit stationary and at an angle. It can neither swivel nor point directly forward which is rather annoying. 

Kindova dumb design choice if you ask me...

As such, I figure I'll just saw off the insert from the turret bottom, smooth it out and then countersink a magnet into it. As for the hull top...I dunno, I guess the easiest method would be to fill it with greenstuff and then mash a 2nd magnet into that. Unless of course I can scrounge up something else to fit into there and countersink a magnet into that instead.  

I gotta baby Squiggoth!

o/

Neverness, paging Neverness...(again)....

Anyone who reads the Neverness Hobby Chronicle has probably noticed at one point or another that in the comments, I periodically can't help but cajole/badger Neverness into painting his gargantuan squiggoth. In person, on Facebook, (on this blog), etc., this also happens as well.  

All to no avail I'm afraid, sigh...

He (quote) has no place to work on and or display it in a way that would do it proper justice. Thus, it languishes in storage for going on close to a decade or maybe more now. I've never bought this beastie myself for much the same reasons as to why he won't build it. Well that and then of course there's that hefty price tag attached to it...

However, the badgering of Neverness is only going to get worse I'm afraid as later today, this beastie will be arriving in the mail and to be honest, I can't wait!

Okay, so its only a baby squiggoth, but its the only squiggoth we'll be seeing here locally for the foreseeable future!

I've wanted this mini for a few years now. However, when I first spotted it I (1) was mad at GW and their lousy atrocious Ork codex, which put the army on the back burner and (2) it was a bit pricey, and it would be coming from England (pre-Brexit) meaning the exchange rates were anything but favorable. 

My only prior experience with Hysterical Games (the model's manufacturer) was...not so good. Customer service was first rate, but the castings, not-so-much. That and the replacements weren't much better, which was another deterrent. 

However the Gnomes were tiny little things compared to this, and what few reviews I could find at the time (maybe one actually, but I can't find the link again), folks who had this loved it! However I kinda forgot about it, and then Hysterical Games had cashflow issues, and then they simply went out of business. Sad face. I wouldn't ever be getting my baby squiggoth after all it seemed...

They've since changed their name to Wessex Games and do still sell Panzerfäuste, although all of the old CAD sculpted minis are gone, and their minis lines now are all hand-sculpted (and to me a bit of a let down comparatively speaking). 

As for my baby squiggoth, well...I'm not sure if Noble Knight Games bought all of Hysterical Games' remaining stock or rather just placed a large order prior to their demise, but they have quite a few of the CAD designed minis, and if you want one of these then they still have one left in stock (I snagged the other one before I missed my chance to ever have it!) otherwise good luck finding it elsewhere.

I plan on using this in lieu of a deff dread (especially as I've never liked any of the ork dread minis throughout their entire history) and as I am wont to do, I remade the deff dread datasheet to fit this model. 

I'll replace the placeholder pic at the top after I paint my model up.

So, Neverness we can now look forward to seeing a squiggoth in our games finally! I'm sure you're thrilled...right? 

This week on ebay...

o/

With the holiday mailing rush over meaning that shipping via the postal service is no longer a nightmare (or, well...at least its not any worse than the norm), I decided to offer up a few more unwanted toys to the almighty ebay.

First up, The Buffet Assault Group partook in its first ever battle. Or rather, they were actually spectators to the battle to see who would take possession of them.

Such cool models, but I'd rather somebody use them just keep them in a mini case forever...

I fully painted an army but never got to play the game...so sad.

Anyone who's been involved in a short, but furious ebay bidding war knows how frustrating and expensive they can be. However when you're selling an item, that same bidding war causes you to cackle with glee as almost non-stop bid notifications come in all the way down to the wire! As such, the price for the TBAGerz almost doubled in those last few, furious minutes!

My other two auctions weren't near as lucrative but sold none-the-less. Next up was an old Battletech tank that sold for prettymuch what I bought it for. Sometimes I wonder why I keep anything Battletech as we so rarely play the game...but that's a train of thought for another day.

Lastly I sold, my Panzerfauste Gnomes. Despite spectacular customer service, the whole experience of poorly cast minis, poorly cast replacement parts, waiting months for said parts and yeah...I didn't have any interest left to even bother to paint the little guys. They sold for the $10 which equaled the price of replacement arms and guns. Ebay and paypal fees meant I lost a little, but that literal cost wasn't nearly as bad as the disappointing experience that I had with them.

As such, with the Gnomes demise, I've effectively washed my hands of Bolt Action all together.

Whilst the lion's share of the $$$ just went into the ol' checking account (because being a semi-responsible adult sucks), I did use some to buy some MINIONS!!! I love the Minions from the Despicable Me movies, and Bombshell minis makes a sprue of (6) robot minions with (or without) guns. I took the ones with weaponry as I think they'll be perfect for use with Rogue Stars.

As for this week coming: I'm hoping to actually paint those Orks I primed last week

16 out of 24…

o/

That's all I was able to assemble/salvage out of my Panzerfauste Gnomes. Having sustained a 33% casualty rate during just the assembly process (due to irreparable air bubbles and mis-molds) is thoroughly disheartening. Yes they are cool minis, and yes the company itself has first rate customer service! However…

Following this experience I find myself loathe to purchase anything more out of their Gnome miniature line not that anything other than what I already have is available aside from terrain (that said, their Orc Matilda is very tempting for 40k...). Their other miniature races/lines for Panzerfauste would probably be a safer bet to purchase as they're larger and presumably, better cast-especially the arms and weapons.

Indeed the only reason I'm not nerd-raging now is I'm only in for the cost of the replacement pewter arms, which came to roughly $10 (previously Hysterical games had refunded the cost of the resin bodies). I've spent more than three times that amount on Vallejo paints for these guys!

As for my little force, below is what I was able to muster. I initially had intended to use as these as the beginnings of a French army for Bolt Action, but instead they barely amount to a platoon now.

First up:  My Lt. who's armed with a SMG. I had a 2nd SMG gunner who went together fairly well, but on later inspection the gun was seriously fucked up and I tossed him into the discard pile as well. He'll at least serve as a test mini for painting.

Its hard to get a good photo of these little fuckers in their current state. Using the blue backdrop oddly washed them out even more. Hopefully some paint will alleviate the problem.

Second, a medic. This poor bastard looks like he's running for his life! Ducking behind a chunk of wall, this mini's pose is terribly stooped over and this was the best I could manage to make him look better, at the expense of being more difficult to paint.

Such a ridiculous forward lean/pose. Several minis seem to have this issue, and
bending their legs to adjust would if anything make em look worse I think. The 2nd mini I have in this pose came out a little better at least...

Next up, my Forward Artillery Officer and his runner. I say runner as these two lack a radio. That poor bastard's gonna die tired...

The Gnome who's pointing will serve as the FO.

The 'bulk' of my platoon (if I could really call them such a thing) is made up of the remaining 12 minis. Those being two regular quality, 6-strong infantry squads. Each has an LMG team. The LMG is probably better suited as a BAR, but I'd have to run them as Belgians to get access to those. Table-top-wise, I guess it would make little difference I suppose.

Each LMG loader can be picked out of the crowd by the extra clip they are holding.

The Squad sergeants are the one's pointing at...something.

Rounding 'em out to the 500 point mark is my old Quar tank which stands in as an H39. Next to these little guys its liable to look huge as well! Personally I'd rather have some more historically accurate vehicles (a laughable notion considering the infantry!), but for now it'll have to do. A pair of FT-17s 'upgraded' (hilarity ensues) with low-velocity light anti-tank guns would equal the H39's point cost. However whilst I'm fond of the Trenchworx model, that would cost approximately $66.00. And...well, to be honest, at this point I'm not sure that the expenditure would even be worth it. 

Given my already general malaise in regards to Bolt Action, its sudden death locally (partially due to Screech's army committing mass suicide), and my aforementioned apprehension towards purchasing more Gnome Infantry to expand the force (no free point-costed AT gun team for these guys I guess...). Instead I may just paint these up and then put em up for auction, washing my hands of Bolt Action entirely.

Dunno to be honest, will have to see…

Arming the troops, TAKE: 2

o/

Notta lot of hobby time available this week given that its almost Christmas. However the metal replacement arms for my Hysterical Games Gnomes that I had hoped to use for Bolt Action arrived this week, and I scraped up a bit of time to see how they'll work out.

So far: its kindova wash.

The few resin arms that I managed to attach the last go round popped off easily, and I set about replacing them. The BAR gunner's arm seemed to fit well enough, but in hindsight I didn't get it properly positioned leaving a gap. But that's my fault not the mini's. Its Gorilla glued on meaning I'll likely break it if I try to fix it, so it'll stay as is. Next up I still couldn't get the infernal VB launcher and attached arms to fit to either mini and just put those two aside before I started nerd-raging again!

However after switching to the riflemen, I gave a few of those a try and they went together nice and smoothly! The SMG gunner was a bit fiddly, as the inserts into the arms are misshapen due the sprue gates (they all suffer from this actually). The SMG's gun barrel is still super tiny and bends at the slightest touch, but...unlike it's previously resin counterpart, it ought to survive use at least.

Yes, I know its a pretty crappy pic, but it'll have to do...

I'm hoping to get at least 20 functional models out of the original 24. Expecting 'em all to work out eventually seems a bit over-optimistic at this point, but I suppose it is a possibility...

Also I'd like to wish everyone a Merry Christmas! Blessed Yule! Happy Hanukkah! Or whatever else there is that I missed but will also be celebrated this coming weekend.

Panzerfauste: My first battle

SPOILER ALERT: Gnomes: 1, Da Masta Cheef: 0

This originally was going to be a nerd rage fueled, vitriolic rant post! However the fine folks at Hysterical Games, and co-owner (I think) Rob specifically, corrected that notion before I even had the chance to type up that kindova post. 

Good print quality!

As everyone knows, I prefer Weird War II rather than purely historical minis for Bolt Action (but not Konflict '47 because its full of stupid zombies). My intent was to give BA's 2nd ed. a try in hopes that I'll like it a bit more, and to get things going with a new army, using the Gnomes from Panzerfauste. Thus I bought a starter set, with the minis swapped out to be all gnomes. It also came with some dice and a Quick-Start rulebook.  

The artwork is reminiscent of GW's old B&W art, albeit with a WWII flare! 

Not sure how these will roll without divots on the one side...

Being roughly the same height as the now out-of-production Kindred minis produced by Hasselfree Miniatures, my aim was more or less to have the Eleventy-First 'hop the channel' and fight in France (or Belgium, as they're equipped more or less identically). Waiting with eager anticipation for the slow sail across the pond from the UK to Tennessee, I was pleased to find a box on my front porch this past Monday. 

The Gnome CAD renders from their website.

Actually, I was kinda horrified, as the box looked as though it had had the living shit kicked out of it! Knowing it was filled with little resin minis, gave me an immediately bleak outlook on the contents. Luckily the minis were swaddled in what seems like half a roll of bubble wrap, and they arrived with only 3 breakages. One of which was due probably more to an air bubble which would have doomed it anyways, a 2nd was of the exact same mini (I ordered 2 identical squads as the Gnome options are quite limited currently), in the same spot but was a clean break, so it ought not be any trouble to glue back together. The last was a VB launcher snapped from a rifle end. 

The air bubble victim has already been 'bagged and tagged'.

Note, these are laying on a 1 inch grid and yeah, those teeny tiny weapons and arms!

Casts of the bodies look pretty clean, with only one showing a noticeable mold line, though given the small stature, it'll probably be lost when painted. However the weapons…seriously, WTF?!?!

I've heard many a complaint form Neverness, Kushial and Screech about the tiny, fiddly guns and bits for their bolt action kits. However by comparison to these, those BA rifles are like space marine bolters in terms of thickness! Yes, seriously! The SMG barrel is probably a millimeter at most? I have no idea how they survived shipment. Likewise I have no idea how you'd be expected to straighten it out without breaking it, or how they would expect it to survive normal use and storage. In fact ALL of the weapons fall into this same category, the the SMG is the most egregious example!

My first attempt at assembling a mini met with disaster, as an air bubble in the minuscule rifle caused it to snap in half at the slightest touch, and there was no fixing it! Zap-a-gap was proving futile (odd, as that's what Hysterical Games uses), and after about 30 minutes I was in a state of nerd-raging fury!

Kind of an ugly mold line, but when viewed at 'actual size' its hardly noticable.

Like any irrationally minded gamer, I blasted out a rage-filled 'WTF?' IM to Hysterical Games via Facebook. Of course they're 5 hours ahead of us, so no immediate reply was expected. Forcing myself to calm down, I put the broken mini aside and over the next hour or so, managed to assemble the 2 VB troopers (minus both of their VBS), and a single BAR trooper. 

VBs broke or mis-molded and removed. Their Bolt Action stats suck anyways. 

They're nice sculpts but seriously, I don't expect their weapons to last at all! Possibly not even the painting process which is anything but violent. The next day I got an apology for my disappointment in the minis from Rob @ Hysterical games, and in our working it out back-and-forth, he offered a full refund along with telling me to keep what I have! Wow, was figuring on shipping em back!

The thin weapon issue doesn't apparently affect their Orc Minis, and only a very few of their Dwarves. However they just recently decided to redo all of the gnome arms and weapons in metal to hopefully alleviate the fragility problem. Indeed Rob told me to give them a shout (seems they already know me well…) in a few weeks and for a 'token fee' they'll ship me some new metal arms and guns for my 2 dozen Gnomes, huzzah!

A good size comparison.
'Surrender you scrawny little Mon'keigh!'

Not quite, but it'll probably feel like it!

Content with that idea, in the cabinet they wait. Not much of a concern as my beloved Wolfy will be getting her 2nd bionic upgrade this coming Monday, and as such we won't be out and about (well, not to the FLGS for game night anyways), for at least a month or so whilst she recovers. So in the interim, its back to working on the Alpha Legion I suppose.