Brrrr, It's a Little... Frosty; first Frostgrave terrain

Just checking in with some pics of the latest hobby progress. Been working on some appropriate terrain for Frostgrave, since I'm hoping to get a game in next weekend. Nothing fancy, just quick pieces. Need a LOT more.
Pretty happy with how the snow turned out. I wanted a real icy-slush look, rather than fresh white snow.

Appropriately, the weather has been FREEZING here in the 'Bool the last few days. Even had some hail today. Closest we'll ever get to snow.

Thanks for viewing,

~Magos/Alex

Dawn of a New Age; first Age of Sigmar battle

Sorry for the brief pause in updates. Been busy with work and most nights I can't work up the energy to upload photos and write anything intelligent (some would say I never manage the latter anyway).

On the hobby front, it has been a great week. Last sunday I drove across to Geelong to catch up with a gaming mate of mine and throw some dice in anger for the first time in about a year. Allan and I hammered out the basics of Age of Sigmar, and had a great deal of fun in the process. While the game was rudimentary and we had trouble/forgot plenty of small things, overall it worked as a casual skirmish battle game. Can definitely see it being a quick and easy option for friendly battles.

I took a few photos, but none of them are that spectacular. Briefly:

Our two armies were equal in wounds (an accident). I had:

Dwarf lord
10 hammerers - champion
10 longbeards - full command
2x 5 Ellyrian reavers

Allan had:

Empire general
10 greatswords - full command
10 archers
2x 10 militia

The battle began with my reavers moving forward and shooting the crap out of both militia units, skimishing with one until it was dead. Meanwhile my troops moved forward, finishing off another militia unit before bad charge rolling left my hammerers in combat with the greatswords without the longbeard support. A bloody battle resulted in all my dwarfs being cut down in return for most of the greatswords, while the reavers shot down the archers, until just the empire general was left atop a mound of corpses, while a shooting circle of reavers formed around him.
It was a great game, and swung a lot mid game as my combat units died in droves. In the end, the reavers proved incredibly strong and won me the game.

On the painting front, I've been working on one of the chaos warriors, as well as some Frostgrave stuff, and finishing off the marauder.

Finally, my copy of Frostgrave arrived yesterday. The plastic ruffians are awesome, and the rules look great fun. Very keen to get some terrain done and give it  a go!

That's all for now, thanks for reading,

~Magos/Alex

Rapid Turnaround; AoS chaos beginning

Guess what showed up in the mail today? AoS, that's what. Woo. Knocked out my first marauder tonight in about three hours. Not totally happy with all the colours, but the armour and flesh are definitely what I wanted them to look like, so that's a win. The cloth... eh, it's hard to paint so many layers of cloth and leather without them all looking the same. Didn't want to use black, but in hindsight maybe I should have.

And a random barbarian I painted last week. WIP, pretty sloppy, lots to fix. Will probably wind up in Frostgrave at some point.

Pretty tired, so not much more to say right now. Hopefully I'll have more progress soon.

Peace out,
~Magos/Alex

Back from the Dead; trying to dust off this old blog

Well hey there, LOOOOOONG time no see.

It's been just over a year since my last blog post, how time flies.

Not that I expect a whole lot of people to read this or care, but essentially around this time last year a whole lot of big changes took place in my life, mostly for the better, that put a dampener on my hobby time. Getting two jobs, which eventually led to stable work at one place, moving out of home and making a whole bunch of good friends down here in 'Bool, and the necessity of keeping most of my hobby gear at my folks' place on the other side of town all limited my ability to paint. Also, my commitments to commission work meant that I never had much opportunity to paint for myself - and that proved pretty lethal to my motivation. I've ended up wrapping up all my commissions except for the large chaos army which is still getting finished for my very patient client. I'll try and get around to sharing some pictures of the completed stuff soon.

In the meantime, I've spent the last weekend working on some personal pieces as a breather.

The first in one of the Stormcast Eternals from Age of Sigmar. I'm pretty stoked for this game, and hope its a gateway for me to get back into warhammer. Models are pretty.

The colours are much darker than the official scheme, and I think it looks good. The hammer is a lot of work, does it pay off? I've been playing around lately with glowing metal, and it's very hard to make it work. Even when the colours are right, the paint just doesn't 'glow'.

Next up we have some Reaper Bones painted up for Frostgrave, the upcoming Osprey fantasy skirmish game that looks amazing. I am very keen to try and get this going locally. Looks easy and fun, a modern Mordheim hopefully.
I still hate Bones plastic. Godawful stuff. But some models are alright, these will do. Pair of storm mages and a ranger henchwoman. Oh, and some loot.

Finally, everyone's favourite blue biotic bitch, the one and only Liara from Mass Effect. Gonna hopefully wind up as part of a larger display. 54mm, so much bigger than most of what I paint. Very early days.