Whoops!

I know... a second post in one day but I thought I'd share something with you... and first a bit of background.

My Dark Forgefathers are made up of a selection of Warpath, Dreadball and Kings of War minis and as a result, I needed to get some extra round bases to make them all unified. That meant a small order to Mantic so in order to pad it out a bit I ordered some extra Dragarim weapons and an Enforcer Champion.

I bought the Enforcer because I thought that, with a bit of chopping, he would make a great exo-armoured Dark Forgefather general. With that in mind, the order went in and I patiently waited but imagine my surprise when the order turned up and I checked the size of the Enforcer Champion:

Click the Pic!

Quite frankly... he's MASSIVE!

That means two things:

• He is too big for the Forgefather conversion that I planned
• He will make a good super-sized, superhero to go with my existing collection

I have often said that a plan never survives contact with the enemy and this little example proves it... but if you adapt your plans, you can end up with a good outcome, even if it wasn't what you were originally hoping for.

It's funny, this life.

See you from the back of the auditorium!

It's Chaos here!

Well... not entirely BUT after 45 days, a lost parcel and a replacement... the Hellbrute has arrived. I have partially assembled it; ready for the conversion work to start and here is a 'start' pic to prove that he is finally with me:

Click the pic!

He will end up as a Khorne Daemon Prince with axe of something or other, powered armour and a means of flight (probably a jump pack). The head in the picture is only there to plug the hole and will be completely covered by the time I have finished. The plan is to bulk his legs out a bit, give him a Daemonic head, replace his right arm with one holding an axe, replace his other hand, add a jump-pack and armour him up suitably to reduce the amount of dreadnought that can be seen (although he will still be part dreadnought when he is finished, I want to tone it down a bit). 

This will be a slow time project that will have to fit ion with other things so expect updates as and when they appear.

He will definitely be fun to convert.

See you from the eye of the storm!

Alas... everything ends.

Today is the last day of my Christmas holiday. It has been a fairly productive time but it has also been far too long a time in my own company and I am looking forward to getting back to a bit of normality. That said, I did enjoy the times when my family were with me and I enjoyed the festivities with them.

So... the Christmas break helped me to:

• Paint a ten man unit of Forgefathers
• Paint an Iron Ancestor
• Paint 3 Berserkers
• Assemble the last ten Clankers
• Sort out my hobby stuff
• Create a fantasy diorama in seven days

Not a bad little list but I have other stuff that I achieved including deciding how to deal with the six partially painted Clankers so I now have this:

Click the Pic!

The six painted Clankers have had all of the dodgy areas re-touched and have had their shoulder colours re-painted. The shoulders and the blue dots on the chests will be highlighted along with the four remaining unit members when they are finished. The four others have been primed and base-coated with gun metal ready for the next stage. I only decided to paint these yesterday so I am quite pleased to be as far forward on them as I am. Fortunately, the paint-scheme on these is really straight forward so they shouldn't take too long to finish... then I can get on with the rest of them!

Tomorrow I will be working and over the next week or so, there will be a certain amount of disruption due to work being done in the house (new bathroom) so I can't promise anything for the next post... which will be back to just Sundays... but let's hope, eh?

See you from the distant island!

Job, jobbed.

After a bit of a 'self kick in the pants', I managed to finish off the third unit of Clankers so without further ado, here are three units of Clankers:

Click the Pic!

They represent the last of the troop units for the army and now all I have to do is decide what I need to do to the partially painted ones and then paint everything. That will leave two vehicles to sort out in order to finish the army.

The end is truly in sight!

See you from the chequered flag! 

Friday's production line.

After the clean-up and groundwork for the Clanker unit was done... and the legs pinned/glued to the bodies... and the legs/body pinned to the bases... the work has started on the heads now. This is the bit where I fill in the area that would normally have a little human head in it with green stuff and put a lid on it. Progress is good and I just have to fill in the slot on the top of the lid and fill the gaps around the sides of the head-turret:

Click the Pic!

I have also put all the necessary blobs on the bases to add a little texture when the sand is glued on the tops. Once the heads are filled, it is simply a case of gluing the arms in place because I have already drilled all the necessary holes and fitted all the necessary pins so it really will be a simple job to finish these off.

In other news, my daughter and I went over to the vets today to drop off some of The Pog's paperwork and then went for a nice cuppa in a tea-shop over the road. I think it is a very good way to start the day. Speaking of The Pog, he is full of catten-wiggles today and has been driving everyone mad so he is back to his old self after his little op yesterday. He has been out (all though not far... he shouldn't really have gone out yet but there are only so many times you can fish him off the curtains before you have to relent!) and has caught up on his food and is now one chilled out little Pog:

Click the Pic!

I'm not sure who is happier to see him home safely... me or The Pog!

See you from the cab of a gutter cleaning lorry!

Oh the worry...

The Pog is at the vets. He is being neutered today and while he's at it he's getting a chip put in and his nails clipped if they need it.

I am obviously supremely calm about it all... not. He's only a little Pog :( .

Good luck Pog and I hope that:

• You get back to fitness very soon
• You are still the same temperament (apart from trying to mount the other cats)
• You forgive me for ruining your masculinity

To take my mind off things I have started to assemble Clankers and have so far put the legs on four bodies and stuck them securely to their base with pins and putty. This bit is the most awkward, boring and time consuming bit so I will be glad when it is all over; then I can start converting the heads and adding the arms/packs. As I have mentioned before, the unit consists of eight standard Clankers, a leader version and a comms robot. The Standard ones are all the same (except I have converted two to have special weapons already) but the leader and comms robot are different. The difficult ones are the standard ones because they have quite fragile leg joints until they are firmly secured to their base but I only have four more to get to that stage before I move on to the not so fragile ones.

In other news, the pictures of powered armour Grymn will be appearing HERE later (it's a Facebook link, so don't click if you don't do Facebook). According to Sally, there is quite a variety of bits and bobs so it will be worth taking a peek at.

##EDIT## Here are some examples of what has been put up on the facebook page:

Click the Pix!

I'll give a Pog update later.

##EDIT## The Pog is fine and is going to be collected imminently.

See you from the desk of the Clanker production manager!

2013

It would appear that the year has changed... it is now 2013.

Happy New Year to all who are reading this... and to those who aren't; BUMS!!! ;)

With a lot of purpose, I began to prep my Vulkan Battlesuits ready for the transformation into Clankers to begin and I have managed to do all of the cleaning with just the hatches to sand down before the next stage can begin. The next stage is converting the heads to have an enclosed helmet and that will be tomorrow's task (I'll finish cleaning up the hatches tonight). One thing I noticed was that the Vulkans are made of different types of metal (some have more lead in than others) so some were harder to clean up than others... but they are all nearly finished so it can't be bad.

I have also been plodding along with my Dark Forgefathers and have finished a third CE-AT:

Click the Pic!

I have started on the next one so although progress is slow... there is progress.

Here's a scale pic for those who are interested:

Click the Pic!

In other news I have started the ball rolling on my 'expensive purchase of the year'... I have asked Sally at Hasslefree Miniatures about purchasing 14 Grymn Walkers. This is something that has been on the boil since the Grymn Walker was first released (early last year) and I have been milling over how I was going to deal with the process of painting an armoured squadron. I finally decided that I would prefer to get a production line going so having them all together would be the first step which means getting Hasslefree to cast me a batch (it is doubtful that 14 walkers would be 'off the shelf'). Now I am awaiting a date for them to be cast... more news on the project will surface nearer the time but it is something that will hopefully get my Grymn Urban Army back into production.

2013 will be an interesting ride.

See you from the branch of a tall oak tree!