Monthly Archives: May 2018

Assembly April: Monthly Hobby Challenge – Personal Round-Up

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Assembly April was a bit of a failure on my part – at least in terms of what I personally hoped to achieve. The idea was that I’d be able to get something big and impressive built as those are the models that I typically put off assembling, but I honestly just wasn’t feeling up to building or painting very much.

I did manage to do some stuff done at the start of the month, and then just after halfway through I managed to motivate myself to get a few more things put together, but to be frank there was a bit too much real-life bullshit draining me, and big plastic kits with a million pieces do put me off as I don’t enjoy assembling them – so I didn’t manage to get a single real impressive model done, let alone the five-six that I’d picked out to work on. A couple of these silhouettes represent multiple related models rather than the single one shown.

Now, I was also having trouble deciding how to do the wrap-up for this month as well, as I’ve actually started painting a bunch of these, but none of them are finished yet. So how to show them off without showing a whole lot of crappy-looking half-painted models? I mean, I don’t mind it when I’m doing a tutorial post, or a WIP-post, but I’d rather show these particular models when they’re done.

A couple of these models still need an arm or two. That’s the other issue with this sort of thing. Sometimes I paint models once they’re fully-assembled, but other times I paint component separately, or paint some of the model, complete the assembly, then paint the bits that just got stuck on. So again – half-painted models that I’d rather not show at the point they’re at.

So it’s a bit of a mixed bag – the models I did get assembled were all things I’ve been meaning to do for ages, and now they’ve (almost) all got some paint on them. On the other hand, there’s other mid-large models I’ve also still not assembled, let alone the big stuff as I mentioned.

Hopefully I’ll manage to actually get most (or even all) of this stuff painted reasonably quickly rather than have them fall into Neglected Model territory. The one with the biggest danger of that is the one up top of this page, as I’ve got to work out exactly which force to align it with, and then work out what kind of additional bling to stick to it…

These four sets of Shadows of Brimstone models shown over the past few days were also assembled in April, so I’ve just added them in here. They weren’t assembled with Assembly April in mind – they were quickly put together so I could hit 30 models painted in April, but they required assembly besides gluing to bases, so assembly is Assembly, I guess – so I figure that they also count.

Shadows of Brimstone: Mine Terrain (and some crates from Grendel)

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Shadows of Brimstone: Mine Terrain

The last of the painted models from April to show off, these were once again some Shadows of Brimstone bits that I found and decided to quickly knock together in order to hit 30 models in the 30-day month of April.

Shadows of Brimstone: Mine Terrain

Shadows of Brimstone: Mine Terrain

The quality in this kit is probably best described as variable. The buffer stop is rather excellent. Nice and chunky. The actual stoppers look a bit oversized, but fine. I painted the reinforcements and such as metal rather than wood mostly as an excuse to get some more colours onto it, and I’ve gone for a pale wood, not quite grey yet – to represent aged wood. I’d have added some grass, etc, but since I figure this is going to spend a lot of time deep in a mine when playing SoB, I’d keep it without any of that sort of thing.

Shadows of Brimstone: Mine Terrain

The mine cart is more than a bit undersized. It barely fits on the tracks, and if you blow on it (or look at it funny) it will fly off. However, the boxes and barrels are a bit more egregious…

This is what was shown in the Kickstarter. So when the sprue arrived, the photo of painted minis above provides both of the “2x crates” and one of the barrels. (yeah, even though the render shows 2x double-crates). Want to see the other barrel?

See that tiny thing that’s the size of the Space Marine’s head? Yeah, that’s the other barrel. So I’ve left it on the sprue so I don’t lose it, since it’s useless as a bit of scatter on it’s own, and will need to be glued to something larger to have any use at all. The other thing is a pickaxe, which wasn’t promised, but I guess takes the place of the other crate. I’m not exactly what you’d call upset – mostly because I have many other barrels and crates, but it’s a bit annoying and silly. They could surely have fit another of the crate piece or the barrel on the sprue in place of that stuff.

Scotia Grendel 1007 Crates

Anyway, on Monday night while I was working my way through this stuff, and the Pylons, and the dive-suit Harvesters, and the Auto-turrets, it quickly became apparent that I was not going to get he turrets finished before April ended. So I went searching for some simple resin terrain that I may not have painted. I found this pair of crate stacks, which I picked up in the 90’s from Grendel (now Scotia Grendel), and quickly knocked them up over an hour or so (mostly drying time) while working on the other stuff. In doing that, I hit 31 models for the month of April – which achieves my goal for at least one miniature for each day, every month in 2018.

Shadows of Brimstone: Mine Terrain, Scotia Grendel 1007 Crates

Here’s the “Mine Terrain” set, along with the crates, and a Space Marine to provide scale reference.

Tomorrow, my Assembly April stuff, then the Community Assembly April, then my rounded-up painted April stuff. Then back to April’s minis.