Painty like it's 1999

 I've been painting hard this year. And I've been reassessing the games I play.

Sci-fi Skirmish

So far this year (and for the last few years) I haven't been doing much actual gaming. But this year I've been on a bit of a Necromunda kick. Really enjoying it a lot, but looking for more. I want to be able to play different settings or different kinds of sci-fi skirmish games without being locked into just one setting and one set of forces.

Stargrave might be the winner there. 

But I'll probably still play Necromunda because I recently talked at least one friend into paying butt tonnes of money for the figures and the books.

Kings of War / Mass Fantasy Battles

I found a guy (Geek Gaming Scenics) on Youtube who scaled down a game of Kings of War to 10mm and that really piqued my interest, naturally being a big fan of Warmaster. :) And that video made me realise that KoW isn't like old WH Fantasy. The figures aren't individual, but mounted all together on a base. Or at least, they can be. And man, that just makes the game so much less fiddly. 

Video here:

Browsing around I found that holy cow, Mantic games and figures are so much cheaper than the 400lb gorilla in the room.

 I may have order the two starter boxes (War in the Holds & Shadows in the North) and the Uncharted Empires supplement. :D

Speaking of which, Mantic's Armada looks really cool too. 

ACW

Oh and speaking of games by Mantic that were based on rules from Warlord Games, I bought the starter box of Epic American Civil War. ACW in 15mm with Warmaster style strips. Oh they are beautiful. 

Here's a sneak peak until I work on them again and have more pics.

 The first building is from the awesome Empires at War pre-painted range, and the second building is one of the bundled ones in the Warlord starter set.

I started painting these minis, but they got put on the backburner because I started painting commissions. A lot of commissions.

Painting Commissions

Here is a massive pic dump of what I've been doing over this year. First a picture of my painting table right now. 

These are 20mm British from the American War of Independence, being painted for my good buddy Jackstorm at the Never Enough Marines blog. 

Back in May I did a few units for him, which he blogged about here:

The British are Coming... Again!

He did the flags and the buttons on the coats.

The ones I'm working on now are almost finished. Well, these four units are. I have another eight units in the queue.

I've also got a box of commissions waiting to go from my friend Grant. Some of the models I've been working on for him are here:

With the exception of the giant straw man, these are all done with Citadel Contrast paints.

3D Printing

And if that wasn't enough, I bought a 3D printer. My first attempts have been slowly becoming more hit than miss, but a couple of my first prints are here:

And I've started painting the barbarian.

General Hobby Stuff

What else? 

I've discovered Brokentoad brushes and love them. I can't do sable for miniatures--I love sable for my watercolours, but I just can't get used to them painting miniatures. But the Brokentoad Fugazi Series Mk III brushes are very very nice synthetics. They call them imitation sable, but I don't know what that means.

Finally, I am considering dumping my collection of Army Painter paints because replacing them with something better might be cheaper than buying and importing a paint mixer like the Vortex (which may not even work with the 240V in NZ). Monument's Pro Acryl range are at the top of my list at the moment.

That's me for now. More will be forthcoming. I've even been considering redoing my Youtube channel to focus (again) on miniatures and wargaming. And perhaps even naming it after this site. 

We'll see how things go. But at the moment, things are looking up.