Holiday Break

I'm about to go on vacation, so this is basically my April output:

A necromancer for Age of Sigmar Skirmish/ Warcry. Very pleased with how he turned out!

An AT-RT for Star Wars: Legion. This guy was long overdue but I chickened out doing the LED mod and airbrushing the camo pattern. Finally took my brave pills and did both last week.

March Results

 March turned out to be a pretty great (hobbying) month for me.

Played some great MESBG and Kill Team games,...

... got started with my warbands and some terrain for Warcry...

 ... and got pretty excited about the Clone Wars expansion for Star Wars: Legion.

"Mini Me, stop humping the laser."

I shall call him "Mini Me".

Two renditions of my favourite Star Wars villain. To the left: Julie Guthrie's sculpt from the 90s, released by Grenadier to be used with WEGs Star Wars - The Roleplaying Game and Star Wars - Miniatures Battles. To the right: Skull Forge Studios' Star Wars - Legion scaled "Cunning Admiral", sculpted by Jordan Cuffie in 2018.

I love them both.

Goodbye 2018, Hello 2019

We're already two weeks into 2019, time for some new year's resolution.

It's fair to say that 2018 got me back into the hobby. With the announcement of Star Wars: Legion in 2017 it was only a matter of how deep I would go... ...and I went as deep as I could. I've gotten into terrain building, started and almost finished my Rebel army, got introduced to the rabbit hole called 3D-printing and even got hooked on GW systems again at the same time. 

The more time I spent with Legion, the more I got talking with fellow hobbyists about how the hobby had changed while I was on standby. To my surprise I actually liked some of the changes a lot. GW, which had almost driven me out of the hobby for good with ridiculous pricing and lacking support of LotR/The Hobbit/Middle-Earth, actually made a huge turn for the better and seems to have remembered to adress their customers as hobbyists first before taking all their money (Yeah, I know what I signed up for...). I loved releases like Kill Team or Blackstone Fortress and actually consider giving the whole Middle-Earth thing a second chance. I even like going to their stores now...^^ 

But how come and what does this mean for 2019? 

Although both Legion and Kill Team are very competitive, they have great potential for narrative play. As someone who invests a lot of time into his miniatures because he wants to get immersed into a game's lore while playing. This takes me back to my RPG days and the time I started wargaming and I love that narrative play and miniature based RPGs seem to be so popular right now. I'm thrilled to dig deeper!

On the other hand, 2018 made me aware that my hobby-related media consumption has changed a lot since I had my hobby break. I used to be very active on forums and draw a lot of inspiration from there. This has changed, sadly. Although I love those communities, I hardly seem to find time to participate as much as I would like to. Same goes for this personal blog. I had some very productive months but abandoned it completely for most of the year. Instead I posted a lot on facebook and got inspired by other people's work there while listening to podcasts or watching clips on Youtube... Convenience seemed to be key, especially in busy weeks when I didn't find time for the hobby myself. 

Despite knowing that, I will not abandon this blog. I like showcasing my miniatures here and writing up tutorials from time to time. It's as much part of the hobby for me as reading a rulebook is. And yet I want 2019 to be the year that I expand my media portfolio and give other platforms a try too. I just made a start by (re-) activating my Instagram account: Finiatures on Instagram. There you will find all that stuff that usually doesn't make its way to the blog: Gaming, WIPs, con visits... Nevertheless, this place stays my Black Library...

Well, nuff with that... TLDR anyways... Time for pictures:

First weekend in January is Szenario-Con weekend. The Con started out as the annual meet-up of a community based around the LotR SBG by GW. It has come a long way since but still feels like coming home for Christmas. This year, some fellow hobbyists and I had a dedicated Star Wars play-area to get super geeky in...

Shifting Lands and Tabletop-Fantasywelten had a great terrain building workshop. I didn't know I want a Proxxon so bad...

Star of the show was HvM's Jedha table. He took terrain building to the next level. This is closer to the movie set than it is to a gaming table...

@the_red_hut finally took his Mimban table for a spin. My pictures didn't turn out great, but check his Instagram account. Awesome scratch builts. I really love the WWI feel of his terrain and minis.

Wait, there's more...^^ arts-n-more's Batuu table is just as awesome. Matthias XPS skills are unrivalled... Being trapped between Geboom's terrain building workshop and this flawless craftmanship took a toll on my sanity... I just don't have the space for a Proxxon... gggnnnn...

It needs to be said that poor Matthias was quite busy hosting Legion games while we sat back and did some more hobbying. Shame on us!

Well, what did I do that weekend? It had been my first weekend of hobbying since October, so I decided to finally paint some minis:

This is just a fraction of what happend at Szenarion-Con 2019. If you want more photos, please check Frank's gallery at https://szenario-con.de/2019/01/bildergalerie-szenario-2019/.

Szenario 2019

Happy New Year everyone. 

It has been awfully quiet here for the last couple of weeks. This is going to change soon. I'm just packing my backs as I'm heading to this year's Szenario-Con tomorrow morning.

Unfortunately I didn't manage to finish my own Star Wars Legion projects last year but I will happily support some fellow hobbyists with their Legion presentations. I'm pretty sure this will involve taking a photo or two...^^

Citadel Painting Handle... Can't believe I bought one...

Yeah, well... The Citadel painting handle is one of those hobby products I never really thought I would ever need. Since there have been some mishaps last month and my left hand was immobilized for some time, I had a sudden change of mind:

Don't Stop Me Now

I was indeed very pleased with the result and I'm actually thinking about getting some more... It has been a great help finishing the Priority Supplies for Star Wars Legion and some Micro Art Studio Laser Towers for my Legion board.

A chest of Lando's favourite wine.

Ready to see some action...

Imperial Terrain - Desert Tower and Mechanic's House

Another two 3D-printed houses left the workbench: Imperial Terrain's Desert Tower and Mechanic's House.

Both buildings belong to my absolute favourites in the IT range (although Dave is constantly pumping out new favourites...). While the Mechanic's House was painted right after printing, completion of the Desert Tower took a bit longer: It was part of the first shipment of Imperial Terrain buildings I received almost a year ago.

Main reason for the painting delay was having to fix the deformed pipe detailthat runs along the tower. This copy of the tower had been one of Dave's early test prints so this obviously isn't an issue if you order from IT these days. I hesitated over it for quite some time but it eventually turned out to be an easy fix. I removed the misshaped part, remodelled it by hand and sanded the whole thing down until it looked right.

Both buidings are quite an important addition to my table as their copper roofs will provide some nice contrast to the brick coloured gaming mat. As a result I went quite heavy on the Nihilakh Oxide I used for the verdigris effect.

The table is finally starting to look alright:

Imperial Terrain - R47 Heavy Lift Truck

I recently bought Imperial Terrain's Mechanic Bay and House Bundle mainly because I wanted the repulsorlift truck that comes with it for my Rebels. It may not look like much but I love the boxy design which reminds me of some of Ralph McQuarrie's original vehicle concepts. The other day a fellow hobbyist pulled of this wonderful print of it (Thanks again!) and finally got me started.

Although I actually should try to find a way to play it, the truck will be used as terrain most of the time. Therefore, I kept the paintjob quite simple but took the time to add some LEDs to the front of the truck. 

I primed the miniature with Citadel's Corax White and added some slight airbrush highlights with pure white. Then I coloured some of the panels (Citadel's Fenrisian Grey)  to give it some variety, shaded everything using Vallejo's Pale Grey Shade and sponged on some chippings using white on the coloured panels and Vallejo German Grey on the rest of the vehicle. Larger chipped areas were filled in with Citadel's Ironbreaker.

Citadel's Agrax Earthshade was used to create some grimy/oily/leaky areas and the weathering was completed by brushing on some red and brown pigments.

My Rebels consider this truck theirs and made me paint their unit insignia on the side of it...

Now I really need to find some rules for a convoy scenario...

Abregado Fusiliers: Fleet Troopers

Alliance High Command has sent a Sphyrna-class corvette and a pair of DP20 frigates into the Abregado System to support the local Rebel cell. 

Times are desperate and the veteran crews find themselves in the thick of the fight more often than they would like it.

"To me, she's royalty."

Everybody loves Princess Leia but not everybody loves FFG's Leia miniature for Star Wars Legion. he sculpt seems a bit odd from certain angles. The hairpiece doesn't quite work from the front, the right hand is huge while the lefthand is tiny, the blaster is ridiculously large... You name it... 

I was not massively impressed by the sculpt either when I got my hands on it and decided to keep my eyes peeled for alternative models. Although I'm still searching for a nice "Splinter of the Mind's Eye" version of Leia and Luke, this Marvel style Leia by Skull Forge Studios is the best I've seen so far.

Although my first impression was that she was on the rather short side, I soon realized that the FFG Leia wasn't the tallest herself. Furthermore, most of the detailing on the Skull Forge Leia is rather delicate while the FFG Leia's details seem to be quite crude. I became curious how this would look on the finished miniatures and decided to just paint both.You be the judge... Which version do you like better?