Waaghcry

Finished my Nighthaunt warband and immediately started working on the next one.

Long live the Queen?

Happy Easter

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.

Grombrindal

Poor Grombrindal sat in a drawer for 15 years but was very happy when he was painted this week.

Initially, I more or less dismissed this Juan Diaz sculpt as I was not into Warhammer anymore when I got the mini as a freebie in German WD 100. Luckily, this has changed again and I was very pleased when I found him among my Warhammer stuff.

"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.

Oldhammer (A)Elves

I rummaged around my parents' attic and dug out some treasure.

These Wood Elf Waywatchers were among the very first metal miniatures I ever bought. Playing Warhammer as a kid was super hard because everything was so expensive, especially those shiny blisters, so I had to find very good reasons for investing that much of my pocketmoney. So picked these fine Gary Morley sculpts to be the souvenir I brought home from a family holiday to Venice in '96 or '97. Cheeky...

The paint job is much younger ('05- or '06-ish) and all I did now was to touch up the rim of the base and give them a fresh coat of varnish. I guess they will do fine next to modern AoS miniatures. Might find some use in AoS Skirmish, Warcry or even as D&D or Frostgrave characters...

Sigmarines Inbound

Watching my daughter painting her Sequitors got me hooked and I bought some more for myself... If the rumors are true and the upcoming Warcry is the AoS version of Kill Team, I want to be ready when it hits the shelves.

Getting Your Kids into the Hobby

I didn't get much hobbying done in the last couple of weeks but once more realized how much I love the miniatures gaming hobby.

My 3-year-old is a real nosy-parker when I'm painting miniatures and usually riddles me with questions if she catches me in the act. Her curiosity was the perfect excuse to visit Hamburg's Miniatur Wunderland ("Miniature Wonderland", the world's largest model railroad layout) with the family.

Just as I hoped, 1.499m² of miniature landscape didn't just inspire my future projects but left its mark on my daughter.

Having confirmed that she actually likes miniatures, we wasted no time, picked some "knights" from our local Games Workshop and went to work. Following her orders we primed the miniatures green and red and then she went on painting all the details with colours of her choice. Once she had practiced some drybrushing we washed the entire miniatures with Agrax Earthshade. The little one was super excited and did a tremendous job here. We painted the miniatures in two one-hour sessions and she stayed focussed all the time and really seemed to enjoy this experience.

So, this is her final result and I really love it. Proud father speaking here, so these might actually be far worse than I think they are but I was seriously surprised at how commited she was to paint these well. Although Age of Sigmar hasn't been on my radar so far, I might have to look into it now. The rules are free and Jamuary and February White Dwarfs just feaured an AoS Skirmish campaign that might be exactly the right scenario for future gaming sessions. I'll keep you updated.

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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...^^