The Butterfly's Tally 2022

Happy New Year! 2022 has drawn to a close and as is customary this calls for a tally of what I painted, comparing it to my resolutions from the start of the year and make some new resolutions.

Final Miniatures of 2022

Pict 1257: Blitz Bowl Face Off

Pict 1258: Blitz Bowl Dwarves

Pict 1259: Blitz Bowl Dwarves

But first, here are the last few minatures I managed to paint in 2022 – the Dwarf Blitz Bowl team. As with the humans, I did not go for my normal painting standard but a bit below that. I'm not perfectly happy with them, but they look good enough to play with. The major hurdle was the orange... I really hate the bottle of Lava Orange by The Army Painter, I have here. The paint simply does not cover well. But then again, I don't paint that shade of orange that often, so I did not want to buy a similar colour by a different manufacturer and powered through.

With that I've finished a grand total of 131 minatures this year. Just a little bit more than 2021 – a double success! And with this number in mind, we are already into...

The Hobby Tally 2022

So, these were my resolutions for this year:

• 20 Warhammer Fantasy / Age of Sigmar miniatures
•  19 models painted plus 10 Blood Bowl balls and markers – I'd call that one done
  
• 10 Infinity miniatures
• not a single one painted...
  
• 10 MESBG miniatures
• easily done by Erebor Dwarves alone
  
• 10 miniatures by independent creators
• only the five Mjowls from the very start of the year...
  
• 10 pieces of terrain
• about half way there with a set of dwarven doors, the 5 pieces of the crashed Aquila Lander and a few bits of 40k scatter
  
  

Looking at it now, that is still quite a lot of stuff and while I managed to fulfill about half of these promts, I fear the hobby butterfly effect really prevented me from getting to the rest. For example, at the start of the year, I did not imagine painting the Blood Angels (more on those later). And the models also reflect the games I played or did not play – since I mostly dropped out of Infinity, I did not paint a single miniature for this system... Still I'm pretty happy with what I achieved and looking back at these goals will inform the resolutions I want to make for this upcoming year!

And if you want so look back at my progress of previous years, here are the links to the tallies of the past: The Tally 2017, The Tally 2018, The Tally 2019, The Tally 2020, The Tally 2021

 

Other big projects of 2022

There are some other projects I want to highlight, looking at my Middle-earth miniatures first:

Pict 1136: Mordor Troll Chieftain

Pict 1139: Mordor Troll Chieftain vs. Aragorn Elessar

Right at the start of the year, I converted and painted two Mordor Troll Chieftains – the second one stepping on an unfortunate Aragorn. I'm still really happy with the two of them and they take a place of pride in my cabinet.

Pict 1196: Númenorean Banner Bearer

In June I painted this Númenorean banner bearer to enter into the Middle-earth painting competition over on Instagram. While I did not make it that far in the competition, I really enjoyed the opportunity to challenge myself, especially with the freehand on the banner itself.

Pict 1210: The Nazgûl of Dol Guldur

The Nazgûl of Dol Guldur were a great project to do over the summer. For one I did not have that much time to paint during august and september and the Ringwraiths seemed like a nice and enclosed project to get back into the swing of things. And of course I got to experiment with texturing the cloth which came out great. If I were to redo the banner bearer from earlier, I'd do that to the black and white textiles for sure!

Pict 1163: Howling Griffons Sternguard Veterans

Other than my adventures in Middle-earth, I mainly spent the year painting Space Marines. I had not thought it possible (man, I still love the little space mans!), but first Arbitor Ian got me back into them with his series on the Badab War; the result of which are these Howling Griffons.

Pict 1260: 2022 Blood Angels Legion

Pict 1232: Blood Angels Contemptor

But of course the big thing was the release of the new edition of the Horus Heresy. First up, here is a photo showing my painted collection as it stands right now. I'm pretty impressed with myself that I was able to stick to it so well. It's Arbitor Ian again with his Tale of Four Gamers series that's kept me on track here. And of course participating in Dreadtober was a highlight for the project! Posting progress every week and seeing what everyone else was up to was great fun and amazing to get to know other bloggers!

Hobby resolutions for 2023

Seeing how I did and did not achive my goals last year, I want to set my new targets with an eye to playing the games. I find that to be one of the best motivations to actually paint my models. But of course I will always get swept of track, so my first three goals are somewhat small asks. I also want to try and finish some more terrain and especially get some progress on with the modular gaming board. Lastly, I again want to paint over 100 miniatures in total. While I have not painted less in the last few years I still want the ecouragement of a goal to keep me in line. And of course I want to try again and paint / sell more than buy...

So, that's it; here is what I want to accomplish this year:

• Paint and play at least the first of the two Cursed City expansions (it's only 6 miniatures: 3 giant bats, Radukar the Beast, Lady Annika and Carmilla DuSang)
  
• Paint 5 Infinity miniatures and play a game with them
• Paint 10 MESBG miniatures
• Paint 3 more tiles of the modular gaming board as well as the rest of the Garden of Morr (that's 6 pieces of wall)
  
• Paint at least 100 miniatures in total
  

Starting Heresy Blood Angels

These past two weeks were spent mainly on building parts of the Age of Darkness box as well as some additional models to get a Heresy Blood Angels army of the ground. I started with a Contemptor Dreadnought and built some more Marines. I also painted a Númenor Bannerbearer as a competition piece a few weeks ago, that I can now share.

Pict 1192: Blood Angels Contemptor Dreadnought

Pict 1193: Blood Angels Contemptor Dreadnought

Pict 1194: Blood Angels Contemptor Dreadnought

The new plastic Contemptor really is beatifully posable. This flavor mine with the Blood Angels in mind, I gave him the Kheres Assault Cannon from the first plastic Contemptor as well as a Forge World one. The Havoc Launcher and the head also come from Forge World – not complicated to retrofit the new plastic body, I only had to use a little ball of Green Stuff to get the head to the correct hight.
Painting wise, the Dreadnought was the proof of concept for the army: The large surfaces let me work with the reds as well as the weathering. To give myself a speed boost while painting, I started from a black primer with zenithal red spray. The complete recipe can be found as usual as a separate page.

Pict 1195: Blood Angels (WIP)

Now this is where I stand with the rest of the army so far. I'm aiming to have about 1000 points painted before building more. So far there is a second Contemptor (a Betrayal at Calth repose), half of a Tactical Squad, a Chaplain and Domnion Zephon to lead the merry band. They are primed and ready to recieve the base colours before a oilwash. I am, however, also waiting on some fitting decals as they go on before the wash. So it seems, I might get to build the rest of Tactical Sqaud one and a second one before that step – we will see!

Pict 1196: Númenor Banner Bearer (Conversion)

Pict 1197: Númenor Banner Bearer (Conversion)

Pict 1198: Númenor Banner Bearer (Conversion)

Last, but by no means least, is this Númenor Warrior, converted to be carrying a banner. I painted him to enter him into the Middle-earth Painting Competition on Instagram run by @1stBornPainting. And while he did not go very far in the competition, he was an amazing opportunity to push my painting techniques. Especially the freehand is something I don't have that much experience with and I'm pretty happy with how it came out. Now, there are a few areas where I could have pushed the highlights even more to get better definion such as the metals – all the more to keep getting inspired and push even further!

Looking at Walls

Man, I can't believe it's already been four weeks since my last post – how time flies! Anyways - here is an update of what I got done in the meantime: I finished more parts of the Garden of Morr and while I was at it also painted a set of walls and fences. Slowly but surely my collection of terrain is shaping up to something! Besides that building the rest of the Cursed City box took an astonishing amount of time. Of course I converted a few things, but still...

Pict 1026: Garden of Morr

Pict 1027: Garden of Morr Mausoleum

Pict 1028: Garden of Morr Bases

The next few pieces of my Garden of Morr set: a mausoelum and the base for another one. After that I'm only missing the wall sections. These might take a litte bit more time however, because I will want to remove all the scuplted roses like a lunatic.

Pict 1029: Walls and Fences

I'm quite happy with the colours and the process on my terrain and thus painting up this set of Warhammer Fantasy Walls and Fences went pretty quickly. Not to much sculpted pieces of foliage to remove as well. Putting on the different bits of greenery did propable take as much time as the painting.

Pict 1030: Gorslav, Kitty, Togilius and Emelda Braskov (Conversions)

Here are the first few models I converted from the Cursed City box. Emelda on the right is a simple repose while the others are a bit more involved. Torgilius needed decluttering and had to leave most of his pets at home and got a simple cloak instead. I like how this leaves him pretty much a creepy old man with his pet fox.

The box comes with two zombie cats and of course that's a great frame to make a living cat! The head is a bit big but I'm pretty happy with my sculpting nonetheless. Can't wait to get some paint on it!

Gorslav the Gravekeeper seemed a bit to much like he came right out of a videogame (propably a Souls game). His mask might be cool and creepy to some but for me it triggered the goofy meter. So I used the head of the Zombie he has on his base and got him a fresh new hairdo in the form of a tonsure. I really like the look of him as a evil monk! "Something happened to Brother Gorslav – he just seems a shadow of his cheery former self..." That's a short story just waiting to be put on paper!

Pict 1031: Deadwalker Zombies (Conversions)

I also found the Zombies to be too cluttered. Getting them to a more agreeable point took a bit more work removing the gravestones and all of the vines. I then resculpted their backs and used pieces of greenstuff to show the ends of the stakes. Somehow I can accept these as part of the precautions one might put in place to make sure granny will not come back as a vampire. Seems sensible to me!

Pict 1032: Númenorean Bannerbearer and Captain

While I was in build mode, I also quickly threw together these two Númenorean Warriors. The guy with the sword is a conversion straight out of the first Lord of the Rings rulebook that came with the Fellowship box set in 2001. The sword as well as the banner are looted from a mounted Boromir and the rest of the model will also be put to good use once I get to it.

A Start to a new gaming board

These past weeks, I only finished painting one tile of my Realm of Battle board and prepared some models for priming – so only a quick update today.

Pict 1008: Realm of Battle Tile

Finally I got a real start on the gaming board I want to do this year. Here is a first tile of my Realm of Battle board. I struggled a bit with the greenery - at first it looked to regular with every patch pretty much the same size. But after realizing this, I went back and connected a few and added some smaller ones, so that now I'm pretty happy with the result! The grass matches the other scenery I did in January so everything should look cohesive when its all done, I hope.

Pict 1009: Elendil mounted (Conversion)

Other than that I prepared a few more models for priming. Among these is this conversion of Elendil, High King of the Dúnedain mounted on a horse. I cut an Elendil on foot in half and made sure to also remove the wing shaped tassets protecting his thighs. I then stuck this back onto a mounted Aragorn, Elessar and resculpted the piece of cloth under the tassets and connected the two pieces of cloak.

The Dark Lord repainted

The past two weeks were mostly spent painting the Iron Hills Chariot, but I also made some time to repaint Sauron, the fallen Elendil and Isildur. Once I had started on painting black, I wanted to keep the train going and painted a Witchking.

Pict 233: The Dark Lord and friend

Pict 234: Sauron

Pict 235: Sauron

I painted Sauron sometime during the last two years, but I had planned to use him and the fallen Númenoreans in a diorama and thus had put them on a large base. Now that I want to use Sauron in scenarios and maybe in games, I ripped him from the old base, stripped the paint of him and started anew.

Pict 236: Elendil, Isildur

 Elendil and Isildur got the same treatment as Sauron and will now be used as objective markers. Some of the new scenarios for the Hobbit SBG will require six markers, so I will have to be creative. Maybe I'll chop up a Gil-Galad and some orcs?

Pict 237: The Witchking

Pict 238: The Witchking

This particular Witchking of Angmar comes from the Final Fate of the Witchking Diorama and in my opinion it's the best footmodel for the Witchking Games Workshop ever produced. I really like the pose with sword and flail in hand. I decided against using the dioramabase (similar reasoning as with Sauron) and put him on a normal GW base. At first I had him on a usual 25mm one, but since the miniature has slightly bigger than the other LotR miniatures, it didn't look quite right. Thus I went with 32mm base that matches his bulk in the end.

Pict 239: Iron Hills Chariot (WIP)

Lastly here's a WIP picture of the Iron Hills Chariot so far. The base is almost finished, it's only missing the snow. That will have to wait until the Chariot is mounted on the base. The Iron Hills Captain that's going to be the driver is done, but the rest of the crew is still mainly basecoated in Boltgun Metal. The work on the Chariot itself is also far along with the washes and the first highlights done. The main thing missing are the goats. Those I am dreading a little since I really didn't want to paint more goats after I had finished the goatriders.