How our plans go astray when the gaming gods intervene! The Jewel of July was supposed to motivate me on a personal level to finish a bunch of small heroes and villains from various games, some large monsters and also get some of those Space Marine Heroes for my armies done.
While I somewhat achieved the first of those objectives, my group’s beginning to meet again regularly after a couple of months’ hiatus – and the focus in our gaming sessions primarily being Star Wars Imperial Assault switched my previous painting of IA models from being somewhere to get some easy wins, mixed in with my other models (as with Shadows of Brimstone) into much more of a proper gaming focus for the month and into August.
It’s not been a terrible month by any means, though it kind of morphed into a bit of a neglected model month of sorts (as so many tend to do) as I finally completed things like a sextuplet of Zombicide models representing both the living and (un)dead states of three Survivors that were started at least 2 years ago when we used to play Zombicide frequently.
Similarly, I got a bunch of LotR models finished that I’d done very little on in the past – in fact, all seven of those models had been started to a lesser or greater extent in the past, though most had little done to them before July motivated me to get them done and out of the way. The big nasty spider had been assembled, sprayed and initially drybrushed a dark grey in the distant past, though I went over the top of that with the browns and also created the base. The Big Brimstone Guardian of Targa was started in June, as was the Royal Guard Champion, alongside his brethren. The rest of the Imperial Assault stuff was actually painted start-to-finish during July, as was the Valkyrie. So 23 models completed for the Jewel of July, including 1 for Temple of Morikan
Since the only difference between my challenge models and my overall models this month was a few pieces of terrain, I’m combining both posts into the one, here.
Aside from the Jewel of July models, the 10 ruined columns from Mythic Battles: Panthenon, the 2 bridges from Massive Darkness and the 4 doors from Star Saga provide me with a bunch of improved elements when I get to the appropriate boardgames, as well as an additional 16 pieces of scatter terrain for various wargames as needed.
16 pieces of scatter also works nicely towards my monthly goal of a minimum of one model of some sort for each day of that month – these smaller, but more frequent and constantly reset monthly goals are working a lot better for me overall than the broader “365 for a year.” My total for this month being the 23 for Jewel plus 16 non-challenge scatter terrain brings me to 39 models for this month.
From Jan to June, I completed 343 models, so with the addition of July’s 39, I’m up to 382. More on that later, though!
Azazel's Bitz Box. 
A fantastic roundup. Monster effort on tge number of models you got done with bo loss of quality. I just said to my wife… “You know how i did the Norris Possesses and that AT-ST for Jewel of July… Well this is Azazel’s effort…”
Her response was “Oh my god, doesnt he have a job? Is painting his Job?… He doesnt have a family then right?”
Good effort 😂
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Well, I don’t have any kids aside from Leonard the Cat, so I don’t have home-child-care duties, and I’m able to leave stuff out, unlike others who need to put everything away due to younger-cobra-children who like to …collect models.
I’m also often trying to finish models started a long time ago (once they’re all done, I can work on newer figures in force rather than scattered here and there!)
Related to that (and not the case this month), I’ve always got groups and squads on the go, that (theoretically) have a bit done here, a bit done there, and so a fair few models can come to fruition at once.
But… I don’t go out a whole lot like I did when I was younger (aside from work, visiting family, going to lunch or dinner, post office, hardware store, shopping centre, the odd wrestling show and of course work!) So yeah, usual stuff but I don’t go do all those things every day or even multiple times a week (except for work! :P)
One of the biggest things is probably that I tend to paint in the time that other people would watch shows or films on TV. So I’m like 12 movies behind in the Marvel series, I’ve only seen the first episode of Game of Thrones, not yet seen a single ep of The Walking Dead, kinda-paused in Season 2 of Breaking Bad, and… well, you get the idea.
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LOL “younger cobra children”. I know nothing of the sort!
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Now I’ve no wish to be critical as this is yet another very impressive haul of extremely well painted miniatures but in truth it’s poor by the standard you set in June. Looking back you managed to do 111 items that month if I am correct which suggests that this month you have either up’d the quality of your work or you’ve simply been lazy. Ì can’t image you dropping your standard so I’m going for lazy! 😉
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You’re right! I was lazy! I should have worked on that mass of treasure chests this month! Some may have had jewels inside!
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Hahaha! That is like saying to some guy who works out, “I saw you bench 600 pounds in that competition last month and now you are only doing 550, I see. Not up to your usual standards, chief!” 🙂
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I skipped leg day this last month…
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In all seriousness impressive work as always. What I do wonder though is where you put everything? You’ve clearly been modelling for years and if each year you manage to complete 300+ figures then the total number of figures must be incredible and that’s not counting your “to do and neglected piles”!
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I’ve got some shelves and a bunch of figure cases. The painted stuff isn’t nearly as bad as the boxed/unpainted stuff. I’ve only gotten my numbers to this point in the very last few years, so it’s not too bad yet. I’ll take some photos of my shelves and such when I get a chance…
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Thems fighting words
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Enjoyed looking at every one of these. Superb effort (and seeing that you are slightly less productive than June reassured me that you are indeed human)!
Now we also have Marouda’s work to see, so a nice family affair.
😎😎😎😎😎
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Thanks Mark. I’ll have to break out the scatter terrain again to get the numbers up! Hopefully Marouda can keep interested enough to keep going.
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A very impressive collection. Certainly tops my one completed actual Model and three bits of terrain for the month 🙂
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Thanks Alexis, hoping you can get what you need done for your upcoming tournament! 🙂
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Great work- You accomplished far more in the month than I managed.
Cheers,
Pete.
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Thanks Pete! 🙂
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Nice to see ’em all gathered together! Excellent stuff! I’ll have fewer nightmares after seeing this lot, because although spiders get mentioned, there’s none of those pretty-creepy-looking-plants-that-you-insist-aren’t-real!
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Thanks, mate! I didn’t get that third one done, but I promise it’s still on my painting desk to get done!
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Bloody brilliant job mate. The roundups are always inspiring.
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Cheers, IRO. Community one up very soon!
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Pingback: The Jewel of July 2018 – Community Round-Up | Azazel's Bitz Box.
That’s some serious painting buddy! You’ve still got it covered in quantity, and that Viking Lady was a really nice quality piece. I’m pretty surprised at the scale, seeing all the minis in a group shot. That AT-ST is quite big. I thought the Wampas would be big, but they are dwarfed by some of the others. Sauron is tall too. He’s so tall, that I now forgive you for painting him green. He could be pink with polka dots and still put some fear in the standard sized minis.
And oh yea, even though he’s hard to see….gotta love IG-88. If he ever needs a home, like by my monitor, just let me know! 😉
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haha. I think there’s an IG-88 a little closer to you. https://www.miniaturemarket.com/ffgswi05.html
It’s a pretty easy figure to paint up as well, so maybe next time you’re buying paints or flying stands you could slip them an extra tenner…
The Wampas are really small-ogre sized, but in relation to the rather slim Imperial Assault models their bulk is pretty decent. I do think they should be a little bigger overall when you look at them in ESB, but then, even the AT-ST is both undersized and “chibi” to what it should be – check out the old WotC collectable SW Minis AT-ST and and the new one for Legion (though that is scaled slightly larger).
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Awesome output mate, both in volume and quality – you are the painting equivalent of the T1000!
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Thanks Alex. I really need to crank it up this month – I’ve barely got anything finished so far…
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Dude – slow internet is absolutely killing my WordPress reader and the new format where it doesn’t keep you logged in is killing my commenting! I am about a month behind on your posts, but all this looks amazing!
Firstly, how are you finding Imperial Assault?
Secondly, is that a Gordon Ramsay mini I see? 🙂
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I’ve not had a problem with my reader – WP isn’t logging me out on my PC or my tablet/phone… Though I haven’t updated to any new formats.
IA is pretty fun, though the shortness of the campaign is a bit of a shame. Feels like now that we’re just getting the characters to a fun power level it’s about to end (we have 1 side, 1 main and the finale left). The mini-campaigns in the smaller boxed expansions seem really bloody short – we haven’t started on them yet, but yeah.. they seem really short.
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