Building the Backlog…

As part of the new baby-centric regime in our house, Tuesday is now 'model night'. It gives me a couple of hours in the week (almost guaranteed) to spend time building and painting my way through the backlog of metal and plastic.

As you can see from the image above, last night saw a random selection of miniatures from different gaming systems, and it was great to finally get things put together.

First on the list was Guildball. I had started these during last week's model night, but ran out of glue! I have to say I was rather disappointed with these models, for a number of reasons – primarily, they were hard work. Don't get me wrong the models are beautiful, however there are some very delicate parts and all 3 have staff/spear weapons that nearly snapped on several occasions and bend very, very easily. Secondly, my batch were covered in flash and exaggerated mould lines – took a long time to get them looking reasonable.

In addition a couple of the arms didn't fit well in their respective sockets so, whilst I expected some pinning, I will have to go back in and do some filling, which hasn't been the case in a long time. Finally on my list of gripes, the tabs. On all three models, the tab that slots into the base sits higher than the top of the base, so will need cutting away. Maybe I've just got used to clipping off tabs and pinning to resin bases. This time I thought I would be quick and simply stick them into their slotta bases – turned out to be more hard work!

As a consequence I'm not feeling terribly enthusiastic about Guildball right now, but hopefully a Tuesday evening painting these models will cure all that!

After that I decided to pamper myself with some plastic. I still had two Malifaux crew boxes sitting on the shelf, so jumped in head first. I started with the Sonnia Criid crew and three of the easiest models ever – one-piece Witchlings! The detail is great on these and not having arms/legs/weapons to stick on was a bonus.

The new Malifaux plastic resculpts are a lot thinner than the metals were and it was only when I started on Sonnia that I realised how thin – thank god this wasn't metal! The plastic glue made things very easy, despite the fiddly bits and the whole crew took no time at all. I didn't like Sonnia's separate face!

Desperate to build something a little more chunky I started on the Kirai crew – Seishin. These guys are much bigger than the old metal Seishin but similar in looks. Went together very easily.

Not satisfied with that I moved onto the new-look Ikiryo – one of the chunkiest plastic models I've seen. Much bigger than the metal version – in fact, more like the avatar – but great looking model which will be fun to paint.

Let's see what happens next Tuesday on model night!

Salute Loot

Bit of a delay to this post due to a rather hectic week.

As you can see above it was a very restrained shopping trip this year. In fact none of the things on my list made it into the shopping bag!

The Mortician's starter set for Guild Ball I've already spoken about in my last post. Nothing to add about that.

Just like last year, everything else ended up being for my Normans vs Outlaws project, which I haven't looked at in a while.

I picked up a couple of miniatures from the Otherworld stand. The cleric and squire are cracking models and are so characterful they have roles to fill in-game for sure. However, I did think the squire was holding a helmet at the time, it turns out it's a box of some description. Ah well.

The rest of my loot came from Foundry. The Jolly Monks were an impulse buy – they're hilarious and beg for a scenario to be written around them.

The other buys were Norman crossbowmen and Dismounted Knights. These have a lot more character than the models I have so had been singled out as potentials before the day.

…and that was it. No massive purchases this year, and there is a reason for that which may (or may not) be revealed over the summer months.

My Salute 2015

I'll start by saying what a fantastic day!

The last couple of years have been a bit hit and miss for me so, whilst terribly excited as it's my only geeky event of the year, I wasn't expecting much. The layout seemed much more spacious that previous years and there seemed to be more people there.

There was a lot to see and, whilst there were repeat displays from previous years, there was a lot of new and exciting stuff to see. New companies popping up all over the place, which I think is thanks to Kickstarter and the like – it's giving lots of people the chance to give their game a shot.

There were two winners for me this year – one, a Kickstarter due to launch next month and the other a Kickstarter from last year.

The first of the two is a game called Infernal by a fledgling company Wartorn Games. I know one of the guys from Wartorn who was demoing the game and it was great to catch up and hear all about it.

Infernal is a skirmish game pitting special forces types against hell spawn. Not my kind of thing normally, but they've come up with some great (yet simple) rules and the models are excellent. It helped that they had a cracking gaming board as well as a stand showing off some of the upcoming models. Keep an eye on this when it hits Kickstarter at the end of May – it could get pretty big.

The other game of interest was Guildball. We're into our Blood Bowl as you may know, so when I saw this game on Kickstarter I had a good look. For some reason it didn't pull me in, but seeing it on display at Salute was a different matter.

I'll be honest, I've no idea how it plays, but the models… oh my word. I have to say, not since early Malifaux have I had my head turned by such a range of models. They're all fantastic, across all the teams… sorry, Guilds!

Bull was like a man possessed at the stand – it really grabbed his imagination – so we took up one of their starter offers. Bull went for the masons, memories of the Victorias in Malifaux being resurrected. I went for the dark, grumpy team (hmmm) – the Morticians.

As you can see from the image above, you get 3 models in a starter set, which means I may actually get them painted. However, I have my eye keenly on Ghast – the big fella in the mask with a nasty serrated blade. No idea how good he is but he looks awesome.

From what I'm reading, Bull's Masons are all about a balanced game with decent defence. Mine on the other hand are about manipulation and trickery.

I'll get a photo of my loot for later in the week and discuss that, but exciting times for the hobby ahead!