There’s a stash of food and drink, a cannonball pile, an abandoned satchel, a box of blades, a treasure chest, a dragon egg, a dead horse-rider… and the cringe-worthy damsel-in-distress. (Perhaps I’ll create a story for her in which she goes on a rampage once free.)
My favourite parts are these nice standing stones, perfect for any battlefield:
There’s also a beacon…
… with detachable fire!
Lots of fun to paint, of course. Washes, drybrushing, all easy. Looking forward to painting more Mantic models.
I’m lucky to live in a place I love. Part of its appeal is the leafy graveyard across the road, perfect for quick paces or leasurely strolls when I need to get out of the flat.
It’s especially beautiful right now, with the trees budding and bursting out in leaves of fresh green. The ground has a thick, shiny carpet of wild garlic. Amongst this verdance are the stones. Some are toppled, others still stand proud. There are obelisks, angels, urns and celtic knots.
Nobody has been buried here for decades, and nature has been set free to riot. Encouraged, even. The result is something special – if you’re ever on Dalkeith Road, you really should pop in.
The light does wonderful things with the ivy at dusk and dawn.
I made more terrain. Some of it is just more CD-based scatter pieces like last time. Other bits are on cardboard and foamboard bases.
The main event is the three hills I made. The bulk of these is extruded polystyrene, cut and sanded into shape, based on a sheet of foamboard, then textured with Luke’s APS sculptamold-alternative.
I learned a lot from making these. I think my main takeaway with the hills is to be more aware of what makes for a good hill gameplay-wise as I cut them into shape. These ones are okay but not ideal: measurements between figures at the bottom and the top of the slope are a little awkward and the surface is a bit too bumpy. Next time I’ll try to make some hills that have steeper slopes (easier to measure) and some that are short and gently-sloped, so they can mostly be ignored for gameplay purposes.
GoblinWatch 2020 continues with a small goblin on a big spider.
I’m not a big fan of the model, to be honest, and I kinda rushed to get it done. I hope they do a new version of it someday, like they did with the Loonboss on Giant Squig. In fact I hope they revamp the whole Spiderfang side of the Gloomspite Gitz range, I love spiders and want more of them.
Despite not really digging the model I’m looking forward to playing with him, either when The Ongoing Situation comes to an end or I crack and start trying to play Warhammer alone.
Late in 2019 I bought a large batch of Gloomspite Gitz from a friend, at a bargain price. I didn’t know exactly what was in this batch, other than a couple of Arachnarok Spiders. When the first batch arrived in the post, I was alarmed to discover that it contained more than 100 Shootas and Stabbas from the old Battle for Skull Pass starter set. Then a second batch arrived, containing even more of them. Somewhat intimidated by the thought of painting so many models, I stored them away and focused on other projects.
Then, a month ago, an Age of Sigmar escalation league started up in Edinburgh. What better motivator for getting through all my unpainted Gitz?
Last week on Wednesday I took stock of my horde of Stabbas and Shootas and decided how many I was going to paint. I painted 2 units of 20 Stabbas and 1 unit of 20 Shootas last year, so I thought it would make sense to aim for being able to field 2 units of 40 Stabbas, or a large block of 60, plus a unit of 40 Shootas. So I needed to paint 40 Stabbas and 20 Shootas.
That Thursday I got out my airbrush and engaged in a marathon priming session, getting some 80 models ready to be painted. As well as the infantry, this included 10 Spider Riders and a Scuttleboss. When I was done I began painting the first batch of 10 Stabbas.
Then, on Friday evening I came down with a cold, but managed to finish the first batch of Stabbas. In total I had spent perhaps a little over 3 hours on them. That’s amazing! I am really astonished by how better tech and more experience have combined to enable me to blast through projects like these.
Last weekend, with all my social commitments cancelled thanks to my cold, I finished all 40, getting through each batch of 10 in about 3 hours. Here they are:
On Monday I was feeling a little better, but decided not to go to work. I hate catching illnesses from my coworkers, but I hate transmitting them even more. With not much else to do, I painted the old Night Goblin Big Boss you can see at the top of this article, who I’ll be using as a Loonboss.
Over the course of this week I painted these 20 Shootas. Again, I don’t think I spent much more than 6 hours on them altogether.
With everything that’s going on I anticipate a lot less socialising and a lot more being stuck at home. Being a productive hobbyist will be a good anchor, I think. Hopefully can have small amounts of friends over for games, but I don’t know how smart it is to play at the game shop or that sort of thing.
Shrug. Look out for each other, okay? Just like these gobbos do.
