Accident victim

This guy was painted.  And then in a horrific industrial accident, he fell into a tank of of Army Painter strong tone. 

I finally fished him out in November.  He looked like the creature from the Black Lagoon, so I set about him with an old tooth brush and a drop of white spirit.

Most of the Khaki colour had turned into a rather attractive almost pastel shade of lime.

There, just in case you wondered.

And this one is specifically for Da Redneck Boss.

DKK LRMBT Progress.

A little more progress on the DKK LRMBT.

Mig Filter blue/brown for panzer grey.

Tracks have tamiya weathering stick (I Love these, but they are a bit on the pricey side) and then Mig european dust slathered on with white spirit.

 Rust on the exhausts and engine grill covers. 

More progress soon.

Armageddon Steel Legion AAA progress.

WIP pictures.

The hull weapons need painting

The tracks need painting

A little bit of chipping.  But not as much as the front line AFVs.

Mig filters need applying

The missiles need warheads painting and decals applying

.Then the European Dust powders flinging about 

And finally sealing

And this bonus motor is from the DKK facebook group.  Now the construction and paint so far is by the previous owner, who is going for a more binary infantry and artillery list.

I've put the numbers and eagles on.

And it'll get the same treatment as the others. 

Now all I have to do is find the STuGs....

Armoured Anti Air Artillery

This this the first troop (half battery) of HVM AAA.  These are the Ratguard Vampyrm SAM conversion kits (arrived from China, possibly HK in two weeks) and the rear doors and track guards from Models and Minis (arrived from the USA, in the best part of eight months). 

Admiral Drax very kindly put the relatively complex Ratguard kits together for me, just as he did with the last ones.  Anyway, the rain and high winds went somewhere else for a few hours so these three drove out to the BoS to see if they'd left the rest of the missiles out there somewhere.

Eight Months !!!!!

Obviously only one of these is wearing it's "bat's teeth" missiles.  For those of you unaware, the Manticore in IA1 could fire either ground attacking missiles as an artillery barrage, like the 'new' one does but without the insane random missile game mechanic (really GW ? scared to let normal human beings have viable weapons ?) or Anti Aircraft missiles.  So this conversion kit reflects that.

Now I have to go back into the garage and see if I can find those STuGs.....

There's a problem...

So regular readers* will know that I have rules of acquisition.  The rule is that hobby expenditure is only allowed in order to complete existing projects.  It's always been a sort of 'if you want an excuse not to buy something' sort of thing.  Only with two small girls I ought to cut down my spending (after all the plastic crack mountain is huge already).

The rules took a shoe to the knackers when the Knights came out. 

Mastercrafted STuG hull without weapon. 

So for 2017 I was supposed to follow the rules more closely.  So let's see how I did:

When	What	How Much
17-Feb-17	Inferno !	89.6	GBP
13-Jan-17	1/35 E50 Deposit	10	USD
07-Jan-17	6x Vampyrum SAM conversions	294	USD
Jan-17	Gathering Storm Fall of Canada	30	GBP
11-Mar-17	3x Mastercrafted STuG	57.5	GBP
11-Mar-17	Red Tithe	18	GBP
03-May-17	3x Chimera Chassis	32	GBP
30-May-17	Track Guards and doors	95	USD
14-Aug-17	3x Chimera Chassis	32	GBP
25-Aug-17	Victoria Lamb bits	100	USD
25-Aug-17	Anvil Pouches	14	GBP
30-Aug-17	Blood Pact half tracks	204	GBP
23-Oct-17	Pig Iron pouches	21.28	GBP
09-Nov-17	3x M7th Chimera	140	USD
26-Dec-17	Shedu Gate	98.51	EUR
29-Dec-17	3x Thunder kits	75	GBP
29-Dec-17	Light box (Cheers Drax !)	6.99	GBP
2018 KS	3x Mortian MBT	154	EUR
		1471.88

Some people finance their hobby buy selling on armies that they are no longer using.  I'm not necessarily talking about the new army/net list phenomenon, either.  Although even that in itself is not necessarily a bad thing, the turn over of stuff putting money into 'the hobby' at several levels.  There are plenty of people who use the completion of one army to finance the new, but; I'm not one of them.  For a start none of my armies is ever 'finished' to my way of thinking - so that makes me a collector, rather than a player or a painter. 

I have had a go at thinning it all down, I have given chunks of armies away where I thought they might find a loving home.  I have thrown away what might have been ebay lots elsewhere.  But this not withstanding, there's still a way to go  to eat the plastic crack mountain I already have and I'm starting to run out of space in a double garage now...

Vampyrum SAM Launcher

So that's three new projects there; the SAM Launchers, the STuGs and the Mortian tanks (who knew he'd do a kickstarter ?).   But a grand and a half is still too much.  So next year following the rules will have to be a little tighter.  

The Mortian MBT

So take this as a statement of intent.  Expenditure to deliver existing projects is OK, but new stuff isn't.  Cue plastic sisters...

I think putting the spend in the little box on the blog has helped, publicly displaying the amounts, erm, invested, has kept the money haemorrhage in my mind at least. So that stays. 

*You can insert your own toilet humour - at 6 and 9, the sylabols 'bum' and 'poo', in any circumstance at all, produce fits of giggles and hours of tedium for adults as the smalls shout 'bum' and 'poo' at each other.  Such is my life.  I blame the parents; trying to teach them about humour.  

End of year round up.

The obligatory WTF post. Progress since this post here. 

And, because it is a work of art and deserves the bandwidth, here is a harlequin landraider.

Mad max post apoc scavvies
Post apoc war rig
DKK rifles                                               Done
DKK Engr, golliaths, Hades Drill               Engrs Done, rest is WIP. 
2 DKK Engr Chimera
DKK Gren                                               Built
DKK re-arms                                           Need to be un-built
DKK Hvy Wpns                                        Need to be un-built
DKK summer uniforms                             Done
Hrossy Yeomen                                       Done
Jornathi grunts                                       Built
Meridian Infantry Coy
Delaques                                                WIP
3 BP BFGs
BP BFG Crews
BP Bradley                                             Opened the box
Blood pacters                                         WIP
Last thunderer
Assorted civvies & pilgrims             WIP
7 BP Half tracks
4 Esienkarn APCs
2 Lynx HQ vehicles
1 Chimera HQ vehicle
Ad mech bodies 
Macrons                                                 Done
SAM launchers                                        WIP (two built so far)
2nd regt rebuilds
2 Chaos spawn (bones cthuloids)             1 built, 1 painted
4 Star Wars Vendettas
ARC 170 fighter bomber
2 Thunderhinds
=I= Gun Cutter (Millennium Falcon)          Needs more work
TGG Nuns with guns                                 Contracted out
And an entire Space Wolf army.

To be clear, the conversion (in case you hadn't noticed, those are bright lances, not imperial pattern laser cannons) and paint are by Jeff from PVP.  Gotta love a harlequin land raider; how else are you gonna move your webway gate around ? Lookin' forward to this spitting 30 harlies into someone's deployment zone...

Summer uniform DKK

Here's some DKK as a Christmas treat before you get too mince pied.  You'll remember these, who turned into these.  Well, I managed to splash some paint on them

Their trousers are DA green, straight out of the pot.  Wow, that's bright.  Who knew ? And the undercoat is khaki, not white, although the VL resin is much, much, much paler than the FW resin. So maybe a black base coat would have helped here ?  Oh well, as you can see from the picts, they only look bright green when there's a lot of light shining straight on.

Arrgh !  I've just seen the bronze splash on the Jnr Officer's helmet.  Bugger.  But I do like these guys.  I wouldn't say that I enjoyed painting them (in one batch of 30) but did feel a sense of satisfaction now that they are so nearly finished.

My normal trick of using tentacle pink as an undercoat for any red has worked nicely.  But.  On some of the boys, you can clearly see a pink edge to the red stripes.  Sigh.

Setting aside the bestial brown gloves and boots, there are three khaki colours on these boys.  Hopefully successfully modulated and held together through the medium of agrax earthshade and deluvian mud.  (see what I did there ?).

The firearms need a wash (nuln oil) and some of the masks may get a touch more.

Hopefully the (supposed to be dark) green theme will be reinforced by these boys.  This man, who's uniform was inspired by a WW1 Russian uniform, fits nicely and of course the Palladians wear a similar outfit.  Obviously there has to be a logical reason;

The textile manufacturers and garment makers on the Imperial continent of Acre have a contract with the DM to supply 72AG (and later 3422AG as well) are contractually bound to provide garments of a specified cut, in materials with specific performance characteristics, in a limited range of colours.  Ergo, the thematic colour schemes which then enable me as a painter and fluff nut to provide visual links across the army(ies).

So I suppose I could claim that every single one of these is lovingly and individually converted.  But I think that being Kreigers chopped in half and rebuilt with VL and Anvil Industry parts, they're more bitsa toy soldiers than super deliberate conversions.

Having said that, for rescued minis, they've turned out OK.

Hurrah !  Fur Den Kaiser !  as they say.