Apologies to all my readers and the wonderful folks who leave comments on here and post on their own blogs. This has been perhaps one of the busiest times of my life since probably my university years. Sometimes it comes down to such little time that I have to pick between writing on the blog or even getting any of the hobbying done. I have managed to sneak in a few projects though, like this batch of terrain for Black Powder. I even got a game in, but that's for another post.
It's been like what, pshht, I don't know, almost 3 years since my last 40K post? And in the post before that I was talking about how much 40K I was going to play (spoiler alert: none). Where do I find myself since then? A ton of Mordheim, a smattering of other games like 1490 Doom, and a whole fleet of little ships. I guess I did play some Necromunda, which is in the same universe. Hated it though. So why am I picking these models up again? Well, the game group I play with all of the time is planning on slow grow campaign using One Page Rules (OPR) Grimdark Future, which is to say a simplified clone of 40K. I finally had an excuse to get some work done.
Large amounts of overtime work have kept me fairly busy and away from the hobby (one of them at least). To make sure stuff still gets done, I try to do at least one thing a night, even if it's rigging a single thread. It's paid off, even if it can be quite slow at times. I've got two more schooners done for the United States, and the last sloop-of-war for the British, which also happens to be the last square-rigged ship in this project.
Well, progress has been slower than I would like, on account of having a kid and all, but I've managed to steal away some minutes here and there. Mostly more Black Seas work, although the new skirmish game Port Royal from Firelock Games has piqued my group's interest, so I've been doing a smidgen of dabbling in 28 mm piracy. More on that in some future post. Back to the Battle of Lake Erie. In the last project post, I was firmly in the planning phase, but now I've got some fruit to show for my efforts. One completed ship, the Caledonia, and some major work done on the Niagara and Queen Charlotte.
If you purchase one of the various starter fleet boxes for Black Seas, inside you'll find plenty of plastic ships along with some metal bits. These metal bits let you customize your frigates and 3rd rates into bespoke famous ships. The United States has 3 normal sized frigates in their box: Congress, Chesapeake, and Constellation. Interestingly, they provide 3 stern plates and 4 figureheads. Intrigued, I looked into it. The figureheads match the USS Constellation, but there were two of them: the first one of the original six frigates, and the second a sloop-of-war from the American Civil War era. The stern plate and the carved wood figurehead belong to the sloop-of-war, which now sits in Baltimore. The more ornate, angelic figurehead matches the original Constellation. I set that aside for now, and I decided to work on the 1854 version.
I went really big, now back down to the really small, to the second smallest seagoing ship-type in the game: a large cutter. But unlike all of my other Black Seas ships so far, this is not a Warlord Games model. This is a cutter from Hagen Miniatures, a miniature company from Germany.
Black Seas has a great set of models, but if there's one ship type you get a lot of, it's brigs. Not that there's anything wrong with brigs. It's just that, at least in terms of plastic models, you jump from tiny little un-rated brigs up to 5th rate frigates. And there's also a jump from the even more minuscule gunboats to the brig. Yes, there are resin models that fill those gaps, but they are harder to acquire as you have to get them direct from Warlord Games, which gets expensive, or hope you get lucky on Amazon or Ebay. Luckily, other folks have noticed this problem and have converted up some solutions. This is my attempt.
This year has unintentionally had something of a throwback theme, as I've started playing Mordheim, and now I'm working on getting an army for Warhammer: The Old World off the ground. I never got to play Warhammer Fantasy back in the day, let alone make a rank and flank army. When Age of Sigmar launched, I did manage to pick up some official models, which I supplemented with miniatures from Fireforge Games. I didn't get very far, as the army didn't really have a place in the modern game. I mean, sure, I could play them as Cities of Sigmar, but it just didn't fit very well. But thanks to the revitalization of Warhammer Fantasy, I'm finally able to give this army some much needed love.
Since I'm basically an expert at playing Skaven in Mordheim now, I feel comfortable settling down with the warband and throwing some paint on some models. First up I have this Eshin Sorcerer, who is converted from a Grey Seer who would normally sit atop a Screaming Bell. Whether or not this is a demotion or promotion for this particular rat is up to the reader.
The 40K hobbying has begun, and it started with the latest FOMO box, Leviathan. I'm keeping all of the Tyranids and trading away all the Space Marines for even more Tyranids because Space Marines suck and I don't like their aesthetic. But do you know who's aesthetic I like even less? The new Screamer-Killer. It looks like it needs a toupee so as not to be mercilessly mocked. And besides, I like the look of the old Carnifex kit better anyways. With the power of converting, I can have the best of both worlds!
