Zombicide Completion??

My previous post had me painting up some of the final models in my Zombicide board game, and this may prove to be the final post on the subject.  If you’re not up to date on the subject, I spent a few months in early 2016 (can it really have been that long ago?) painting up a few hundred models for a board game called Zombicide.  That included a great deal of Zombies, but also what appears to be about 72 character models as well.

Last post I explained that my goal here wasn’t to try to paint these to a super high standard, but rather to get a reasonable color match so that you could easily discern which figure was yours during the game.  This time around, I wound up painting up the Snipers & Handymen, and I think I kind of failed at my original goal.

Granted, I think with both sets of figures, you can tell who they’re supposed to be.  The colors are roughly matching, but rough is the right term.  It was really the greens that did me in, because I tried to paint their greens with a custom paint I had made before labeled as “ammo can.”  My thought was that it was reasonably close and it would work as a color for fatigues.  Clearly, it’s passable, but it’s not remotely close to the right shade of green from either picture.

Still, I think you can easily tell, based upon the hats and models’ stances, which models are which.

The eyes on the handymen give them a distinctly Anime vibe, but I’m not exactly sure why that is.  Anime figures have large eyes, so that makes sense–but I had even larger eyes on the gunmen, and they didn’t have that same feeling to me.

So yeah, they’re not perfect, but these are glorified equipment cards for a game that rarely see the table (though we do play Zombicide with some level of frequency, these particular cards are a bit of a rarity).  They also served as a little inspiration to get me into painting again–and maybe as a gateway to playing 40k one day.  I think in that regard, I can call these guys a success.

BatRep: Hive Fleet Proteus vs. Necrons (98 power)

So, the real inspiration for my “not dead yet” post earlier this week was that I actually got a game of 40k in this past weekend!  No, it wasn’t at my regularly scheduled game night.  Instead, Albert dropped by on Saturday and we managed to knock out a game.

The amount of rust was absurd.  At one point, I had to go back and remember that BS3 now meant that you hit on 3+, and not on 4+, while another time I had to go look up the wound chart to figure out how that worked again.

Yes, undoubtedly, I’m more than a little rusty.

There’s really only one way to fix that, so we pushed through the cobwebs and threw down…

Hive Fleet Proteus

• HQ:
  • Swarmlord (The Horror, Catalyst)
  • Broodlord (Psychic Scream)
• Elites:
  • Hauraspex
• Troops:
  • 15x Genestealers
  • 15x Genestealers
  • 5x Genestealers
  • 5x Genestealers
  • 10x Hormagaunts
• Heavy Support:
  • Trygon Prime w/ Scythes of Tyran
  • Trygon Prime
  • Trygon Prime

Zombicide Progress: Companions!

With the release of new models for Chaos Space Marines, my friend Simon has been incessantly texting us with unbridled excitement.  At first, it was cute.  We looked at him as a kid on Christmas morning: so excited for Santa; however, it never tampered down.

He’s since picked up quite a few of the models and is painting them like crazy.  Still, the endless wave of texts grinds on.  With these texts, I can feel my sheer hatred of painting wasting away.

Not completely, mind you–but enough that I thought I might dabble in a little painting again.  Recently I wound up playing Zombicide with the guys and got harangued for having eight unpainted models in my collection.  If you recall, I spent a good deal of time in 2016 painting up several boxed sets of figures, but I stopped short of completion when it came to figures I’d never used: companions.  So, what better way to dip my toe back in the waters than to start with them?

Of the eight models, there are four poses.  I toyed with the idea of painting them slightly different so that you could tell which belonged to which player, but then realized that was pointless because they’re identical in the game.  I started off with the gunmen and searchers, for no particular reason.  Actually, I wound up starting up a little bit of a base coat on all of them, but eventually stopped that and focused on these two guys.

Overall, I’m happy with how they came out.  My goal wasn’t to paint these to a super high standard, but to approximate the quality I’d accomplished with the rest of the set.  Originally, I’d set forth the game as a means of testing my ability to color match things, and while I’m a little off here and there, I think you can detect who the model is without too much trouble.

The gunman’s eyes are definitely on the cartoony side (my micron pen seems to have dried up during my painting hiatus), and the pants ont he searcher are a little too blocky.  He also looks a bit like George Lucas with a bouffant hairdo, but I think that’s actually somewhat intentional.

I haven’t figured out what color to paint the bases though.  Gray seems appropriate, but I want them to stand out at least a little bit from the characters.  I’d considered a hazard stripe theme, or maybe gray with a hazard stripe around the base–but that’s going to draw your attention to what’s essentially a glorified piece of wargear on the table.  Got any ideas about what I should do?

We’ll see if I come up with something before I finish the other four models.

 

 

Selling Ogre Kingdoms, Beastclaw Raiders, Warriors of Chaos, & Slaneesh

I have a nasty habit of buying things I don’t need.

Ok, all gamers seem to suffer from similar afflictions.   I’m not sure my disease is any more acute than yours; however, I do find myself buying things that I have absolutely not intention of ever using–so I’ll let you decide if I have it better or worse than you.  What I mean by that is, if I find a good deal, I buy it.

Well, not just any good deal: insanely good deals.

Generally speaking, people in my area seem to sell out of armies with likely the same regularity as they do where you live.  We live in a city of roughly 300,000 people, and I’d say there’s a reasonable market for Warhammer.  The one thing that I can’t fathom is that the resale market here is in the pits.  I’m not sure why, but nobody seems to really want to buy used models in my neighborhood.

Functionally, that really sucks if you’re trying to sell figures, but it’s awesome if you’re in the market for stuff.  Frankly, I have too many models, and I shouldn’t be in the market for anything; however, when armies are going for 80-90% off MSRP, I can’t help but jump in.  My thought process is that, at that rate, I can justify parting things up and selling them on Ebay.  Historically speaking, I’ve generally made between 40-60% of MSRP when selling things on that site, so with enough volume, I can justify storing these things for a while.

The downside is that I just sold a bunch of crap on ebay earlier this year.  It actually got the point that I could see the workbench in the garage.  I’d like to keep that going, so I plan on selling these things in the near future.  So, if you have an interest in any of the things listed here, hit me up and we’ll chat.

For prices, I generally stick things up on ebay for $.01 and let the market determine the price.  If we’re negotiating outside of that, I generally look up sold auctions on ebay to get an idea of value and set the price from there.  Keep in mind that I’m going to likely pay about 13% for ebay fees, so you can get that kind of discount at least.  Care to work up a deal?  Make an offer and these can all be yours!

Please forgive the giant image dump.  You should be able to click on any of the photos for a bigger version of each.

 

 

I’m Not Dead Yet

This blog was originally started with a mindset wherein I’d keep track of my 40k progress–both for my win/loss ratio, as well as my hobby & painting progress. It’s evolved slightly since then, but it’s still pretty well themed to 40k (which is understandable, considering the name).

The thing is, I don’t play much 40k anymore. I’m not done with it, by any stretch of the imagination. As I’ve alluded to before, 40k is cyclical to me. Interest in the game waxes and wanes over time, so while at the beginning of last year I had knocked out 12 games in six months, this year, I’m struggling to even get one game in. In fact, I haven’t gotten a game in since November of 2018.

That isn’t to say I don’t game anymore–quite the opposite: I game pretty much every week. I just don’t play 40k much as of late. Most of my weekly game nights have been spent playing board games with friends. Maybe we see a shift in that dynamic in the future though.

Though readers out there will surely not have seen it, I have been keeping track of my gaming progress through an iphone app called “Board Game Stats.” I started tracking all of the games I play on January 1st, and to date I’ve racked up 80 plays this year (which is good, since there have been only 98 days so far at the time of writing this). Rest assured, I’m getting my game fix in.

I’ve also started painting a bit, and I’ve been keeping track of little hobby progress items ever since the blog went dark. So, with any luck, the turning of the season and the re-establishment of the glowing yellow orb in the sky will help inspire me to blog a little bit more. I suppose I can’t blog any less, eh?

The irony is that every great blog seems to end on a post like this-trying to inspire renewed interest. Rest assured, this will not be the final post of this blog. Hell, 2019 is the 10th anniversary of the blog–here’s to 10 more!