Master Builder: Part 2

Next up on my building list is my Nomad army.

Infinity: Space Gypsies

I have a respectable collection of Infinity models that I've built up over the years. However they have been sitting idle gathering dust all this time as I felt that my painting skills have not quite reach the level to do them justice. I want to give them all a non metallic metal (NMM) paint job. It's pretty advance stuff.

However I eventually came to the conclusion that the best way to improve my painting skill is to go out and challenge myself and try out these advance techniques. Sink or swim as they say.

With that, I decided to start off with the faction I believe will have the easier paint scheme: my Nomads army:

Sweet cheap resin bases from Taban miniatures

Corregidor starter plus Intruders and a TAG pilot

Bakunin Jurisdictional Command

Tunguska TAG

I went ahead and clean up the mold lines. Corvus Belli's minis are not only supremely well sculpted but also comes with very little mold lines. There were no defects to speak of. There was however a mix up with the components for the Intruders (i.e. two left arms) but I got this replaced in short order.

Being metal minis, I also decided to pin all the legs of the models to the resin bases. This was a great idea until I reached the female models and their anorexic legs. Due to some twisting that occurred while I was drilling it snapped off! Eeek!

Shoe fell off

Pinning required

This forced me to do some delicate repair work via pinning (it wouldn't work with just superglue). I stopped pinning the minis to their bases after I broke my second female model. Lesson learned!

I envisioned my Corregidor army with a superhero-esq paint scheme with blue leggings, red bodies and arms and possibly white/red armour. Not sure yet. I think I'll sick to the studio paint scheme with the Bakunin though. White and orange is a nice combo.


The Hobbit: Bilbo & Gandalf

I was so impressed with the Desolation of Smaug when I saw it in the cinemas back in December that I pestered by GF to buy the minis for me as a Xmas present.

The prices were too eye watering for me to justify buying it myself!

I always wanted some LoTR minis for my collection, particularly Gandalf, but never got around to picking them up.

After assembling both Bilbo and Gandalf, I must say that these are genuinely pretty models. The scale is smaller than that of 40k but just as detailed. You should see Bilbo's sword, Sting, it's tiny! I particularly like Bilbo's action pose. Very dynamic.

I look forward to painting these guys up. Should be a nice change of pace from all my mainly Sci-fi minis.

Master Builder: Part 1

If you've seen my Kanban board in my last post, you would have noticed that I have a LOT of stuff on my hobby table.

I have a good number of projects that I've managed to move over to the 'Prepped for Painting' section. But for some reason or another I'm just not in the mood to continue to the next stage and paint. Instead I've been building like a man possessed. I will split my next few posts up over the next number of days as there are a lot of photos.

BFG: Grand Cruisers

First on the list are my 2 Imperial Grand Cruisers. These models were pretty hard to put together. It could be due to the age of their molds but the components of this model do not fit together well at all. There were massive gaps particularly between the prow (front), middle section and the stern (rear).

There was a lot of green stuffing and pinning involved.

Not only that, I magnetised the crap out of both vessels so that I have the flexibility of using all 3 variants namely the Avenger, Exorcist and Vengeance Grand Cruiser.

Like so:

Avenger

Exorcist

Vengeance

I drilled two holes on the main body and inserted 2 6X2mm N52 magnets. These are the strongest grade you can get at this size. These magnets are for the placement of Imperial Navy weapon platforms. I also placed 4 tiny 1.5X1mm mangets on the top sections. These are for Chaos weapon platforms. You need both to create the variants above.

My intention is to paint one in the same colour scheme as my Imperial Navy fleet while I will paint the other black as an Inquisitorial Black Ship.

With this in mind I decided to differentiate the ships slightly by borrowing an unused control tower from my Chaos Despoiler Battleship to replace the stock component on one of the vessel. This one change completely transforms the profile of the ship.

Only difference is the control towers on top

Assembled and magnetised

 I'm really impressed with these models. They are way bigger than I imagine. Nearly as big and imposing as an Emperor Class Battleship.

Man I can't wait to have all my BFG stuff assembled and painted.

Anyway that's all I have time for tonight.

The Emperor Protects :P

Do you even Kanban bro?

I'm sure I'm not alone when I say I have a TON of unpainted minis.

The problem I have is I don't hobby on a regular basis but I buy new minis like my life depends on it. Even when I'm actively hobbying I rarely complete projects as I get distracted too easily.

This leads to two very undesirable outcomes:

1. I don't game nearly enough as I dislike playing with grey plastic; and
2. I get demotivated by my lack of progress and rage quit

One very handy tool I've found recently is Kanban board. This is a scheduling tool that can help you organise and manage competing projects.

It was originally devised and used in the automotive industry but can easily be applied to painting your man dolls. I jumped on the Kanban bus after listening to the guys over at the Independent Character Podcast. They have done a short tutorial which I have linked here. This would be a good place to start if you are interested in trying out this tool.

My Kanban Board

Above you can see my Kanban board as of today.

One thing I really like about this tool is that it is very visual and allows me to see at a glance what my current projects are and how far they are from being completed.

I have minis from a variety of different gaming systems which I keep track by colour coding each one. There are loads of functionality such as setting due dates, setting sub-tasks etc. which you can try out to further improve your productivity.

My board only includes what I consider my "current" tasks. Which as you can see is pretty big already. The scary thing is that this is only the tip of the iceberg in terms of my mini collection.

I thought I'll bring this to the community's attention as it is certainly a fantastic tool which is no more complicated to operate than an excel spreadsheet.

This also provides a preview of what you can expect to see on this blog in the near future.

Welcome to my blog, there are many like it, but this one is mine.

Hello all,

Welcome to my blog where I will wax lyrical about my various hobbies.

I'm a keen (read obsessive) miniature collector and have minis from systems including WH40K, Infinity, Warmahordes, Anima Tactics and many others.

I'm alright with a paint brush and will showcase my hobby projects. I intend this to be a self motivator to help me finish my many open projects. I will strive to make a post on this blog at least once a week. As a side effect, I also hope this will be of interest to my fellow hobbyist. If you learn a trick or two, great. If I inspire you to work on your own hobby projects, even better.

I'm also known to throw down dice and game with my man dolls. This happens too little as of late. Real life tends to get in the way. However I intend to remedy this soon. Additionally I will also make posts of my games and even perhaps tutorials of lesser known systems. All for your entertainment and education.

My nerdy interests encompasses more than just table-top gaming. As such I will interject my table-top hobby posts with discussions/reviews of my other interests including video games, books and movies. Variety is the spice of life as they say.

As a taster here are some pics of my previous hobby endeavours:

Well that's it for my first blog post.

See you soon.