Addicted to Lead

The week of April 26th, wrapping up a good month!

April wound up being a good month overall, with significant progress! I finished the equivalent of 44 more 28mm figures towards my goal of 350. I’m also 2 figures away from completing the commission of a German WWII army for a friend!

This week I worked on a couple of test color schemes for 25mm Ground Zero Games figures. I wasn’t happy with the last time I attempted an urban camo pattern, so I took another shot at it I’m fairly pleased with this first batch of figures, the only change I made on the next batch was painting the guns darker which helps them stand out against the grey armor plates.

Ground Zero Games ESU naval figures and a Proxie Models pre-fab building.

Meager progress for the week of April 19th.

After a couple weeks of good progress I slowed down on chipping away at the lead pile. I finished one single piece that had no paint on it when the week started from my own collection, and a fist full of figures that were half finished and sitting around for two years.

What I did do was almost complete a commission of Germans from a friend. I am a slow commission painter, which is why I only take commissions from friends. This one was a large German army with over 60 figures and half a dozen vehicles and had several pieces added mid commission, but it still took me about 6 months to finish. Clearly not the kind of speed to satisfy a customer I don’t know. I was down to 20 guys when the month started, and I’ve been banging out 6ish a week. The last NCOs are half done right now with just a MMG team left to build and paint and Chris will have a full force to march in front of my Americans.

Weekly progress for the week of April 12th.

I started of the week with a short list of models to paint. I wanted to start on my Tehnolog Battletech force and paint up some of the Beyond the Gates of Antares Ghar battlesuits, not that I know what to use them for since I don’t play the actual game.

The more I use them the more I like the Army Painter matched primers and paint. They’re not cheap but they speed up my painting progress quite a bit, and these days the time is more important to me. I used the Wolf Grey and decided on a french Caunter camo inspired paint scheme for both the Ghar and the mechs. Painting them together helped get them finished pretty quick, by the time I finished going down the production line with one color the first model was dry and ready for the next.

Primed, camo airbrushed on, ready for the paintbrush!

Progress for the ACTUAL week of April 5th…

Somehow I can’t read a calendar and labeled last week’s post wrong… THIS week of April 5th saw me shake off the hobby ADD I started the month with. I finished off one project, three test pieces for Blood and Plunder and continues to expand my 6mm forces.

Late last year I bought a large collection of Dreamforge Games Eisenkern soldiers. Half of them were assembled well enough but not even primed, the other half were on sprues still. I gathered a platoons worth of assembled figures, fixing a couple of them or adding bits, and started painting them up in a simple ‘Space Germans’ scheme. I had one squad left, plus the command element, to finish my first platoon. There’s enough figures left to eventually paint up a full three platoon company plus support weapons, powered armor and a battlemech if I want to continue.

Weekly progress, April 5th

The beginning of April hit me with some hobby ADD. I started the week working on some more Eisenkern, a third squad plus a command element to finish up a platoon. That didn’t last long though! I also have a longish term project of finishing the basing on three platoons of 25mm GZG figures that wasn’t even touched.

Dollar Store Finds.

Our local Dollar Tree had a couple of toys that I grabbed probably too many of and turned into wargame stuff. I’ve been hunting for a couple more things to use for scratch building some spaceships I’ll probably never actually play with, but this whole lockdown is cramping my style.

I normally don’t have much luck at dollar stores or thrift stores. I see something posted online and go search 14 dollar stores and find nothing. But these two have been consistantly in stock around me and I was able to pick up about a dozen boats and six or eight of the tanks.

This week’s progress: March 22nd

The week of March 22nd saw me finish up two different projects sitting around and making progress on a third. Well I’m almost done, I ran out of AK Interactive Ultra Matte and waiting on a back order to be filled.

I finished off the metal Combine Ogre minis from Steve Jackson Games. The last of the missile tanks are waiting for the Ultra Matte to come in, whenever that is. Now I need to get cracking on all the plastic minis I have from the Kickstarers. But first I’ll need more bases from Litko.

I had a lot of these, it’s a good thing they don’t suck.

Dipping into 6mm SciFi

I’ve been tackling a lot of 25mm Sci-Fi figures after doing a lot 28mm WWII Germans, so I felt the need for a palette cleanser. I knocked out some 28mm-ish farm animals to use as objectives in viking raids and moved onto some piles of 6mm Sci-Fi units, some of which I’ve had for decades.

Years ago I picked up the last Steve Jackson Games OGRE designers edition that my FLGS had. I liked the game, played some with my kids before they lost interest and then put it away. Later on when the minis Kickstarters were launched I pledged for the base sets, which still amounts to hundreds and hundreds of plastic minis to assemble and paint. At the same time I picked up a couple of batches of the metal Combine minis to tide me over until Steve Jackson Games gets around to Kickstarting them. I also have an odd assortment of stuff I bought in the 90’s when I thought I was going to play Dirtside, a mix of Battletech, GZG 6mm, Renegade Legion, etc…

It just sits up there, lonely and forgotten…

Last weeks progress, week of March 15th

Last week, the week of the 15th, was rough. In preparation of what turned into a total lockdown here in NY my wife and I started to transition to working from home. We set up work stations, decided to pull the 2 year old out of daycare and tried to get a routine set up. I carved a spot out in the basement, moved everything around and got to trying to work.

On the modeling front I didn’t get a whole lot finished. I prepped a bunch of 6mm sci-fi stuff, mostly old metal OGRE minis and some Bradley Miniatures I got from Alternative Armies. These guys will be the OpFor for the plastic OGRE minis I still need to order some more glue to finish assembling. Its just a simple brown desert paint job with green unit markings and some greebles picked out in grey and red.

Dealing with a ‘bad’ month. The road to 350.

We all start out our resolutions with gusto and enthusiasm, and then we hit a snag and give up. January was a slow month for me, but I was expecting it with the holidays and all. In February I had hoped to paint several batches of figures, especially since I had already started prepping and painting a platoon of figures with a real simple paint job before the month began. But, alas, ‘stuff’ happened. Sick family members, hospital visits, bad weather for priming, exhaustion. It all combined and I only finished the 26 man platoon.

A Tomorrow’s War US Marine Corps unit out of the Grissom colony on it’s way to Glory.

Continue reading “Dealing with a ‘bad’ month. The road to 350.”