Year Ending...Standing and what is on the horizon

And so 2011 is soon coming to an end.  This will be my last post of this year.  The year seems to have flown by.   So, I have decided to do a sort of summary.

I’m a numbers kind of guy, its my business to crunch numbers, not money but numbers in designing things. So numbers always fascinate me. Early in the year I decided to add the Hobby Activity log you see on the right. The final tally:

Models Built/Converted: 225
Models Painted: 74
Models Purchased: 191
Tournaments Played: 4
Go-Kart Races Entered: 11

Now this was not intended to stroke my ego, but was more intended as a motivator and budget type of thing for myself. I learned a lot by intentionally doing this, and quite honestly it capped some of my spending as I saw the gap between what was bought, converted/modeled/ and what was painted. I did not play as many games this year. And it feels like I converted less minis, mainly because I stopped taking on commissions. My painting is certainly lagging behind. It also felt like I raced more than 11 races in the go-kart, my highest finish was second in a heat race, no wins, that does hurt my ego. Some of that I believe was equipment related, but we intend to work on solving that over the winter off season.  One thing is certain, I enjoyed the racing more than the tournaments played.  Four tournaments played, 2 of which were at Adepticon last spring in Warhammer Ancient Battles.  I played the singles with my Romans and played fairly well, rather unusual for me, and came away best sports, even more unusual.  Then teamed Mike Butcher, my crusaders with his Saxons, and we played well and the Team that we named Grumpy Old Coots came away with Best Sports, again highly unusual.

As for the blog, today we are at 181 followers, that has increased gradually as I suspected it would. My blog list is growing, and my forum activity is decreasing a bit.

This I find interesting, here are the top ten in posts as they stand all time on my blog along with the number of hits currently:
Review of Conquest Games Mounted Normans:  2,105 Views
http://psychosispc-themadhouseworkshop.blogspot.com/2011/01/conquest-games-mounted-norman-knights.html

My first Skaven War Litter conversion: 1,586 Views
http://psychosispc-themadhouseworkshop.blogspot.com/2010/06/something-differentskaven-war-litter.html

My first Nurgle infested Chaos Space Marine: 1,478 Views
http://psychosispc-themadhouseworkshop.blogspot.com/2010/06/nurgle-infested-chaos-space-marine.html

Converting Chaos Warrior to Chaos Space Marine post:  848 Views
http://psychosispc-themadhouseworkshop.blogspot.com/2010/07/chaos-warrior-to-chaos-space-marine.html

Boba Fett Chaos Space Marine conversion:  737 Views
http://psychosispc-themadhouseworkshop.blogspot.com/2010/06/boba-fett-space-marine-conversion.html

Pics of My WAB Imperial Roman Army:  657 Views
http://psychosispc-themadhouseworkshop.blogspot.com/2011/01/pics-of-my-wab-roman-army-in-full-force.html

My Chaos Warrior Unit and its conversions:  640 Views
http://psychosispc-themadhouseworkshop.blogspot.com/2011/06/my-chaos-warrior-unit-beginning-to-take.html

My Preheresy Iron Warrior - Old Stuff Wednesday:  512 Views
http://psychosispc-themadhouseworkshop.blogspot.com/2011/07/old-stuff-wednesday-julypre-heresy-iron.html

One of my Exalted Champions:  469 Views
http://psychosispc-themadhouseworkshop.blogspot.com/2010/08/one-exalted-champion-done.html

My First Orc Fight Scene for a unit:   447 Views
 http://psychosispc-themadhouseworkshop.blogspot.com/2010/09/orc-boyzfight-scene-1.html

It appears people really liked looking at my take on Conquest Games Norman Cavalry.  I’ve been quite surprised by that. When I wrote that piece I never thought it would receive more hits than my conversion work and paint work. The other thing I noticed was the popularity of Warhammer 40k, it is really quite unquestionably the most popular of the gaming system that I’m working in as it owns the majority of the top spots.  My Old Stuff Wednesdays are certainly popular as they have held 3-4 of the top ten spots throughout the year, but only one stands at the end of the year.

So there you have it my blog. I really need to figure out a better looking banner across the top. I also need to find a cooler looking background.  And I am very much open to suggestions that you the readers may have, I don’t always ignore them.

In the coming year I certainly intend to do Vikings, Spacemarines, more crusaders, more Chaos Warriors, more Fantasy orcs, and eventually some British Napoleonics.

What is Wrong with 8th Edition Fantasy??

That's the question asked by BoLS.

Just my opinion and the reasons why I dislike this 8th Edition:

• I hate the measure anything anytime.
• I hate the randomness of charging and the obnoxiously long charges that can be pulled off by randomly rolling dice.
• I don't like that they attempted to fix combat which I did not think needed fixing in the first place.  Now its massed casaulties for a cool looking visual.
• I still think magic ruins the game and is still broken.   Not even close to being fixed and in my opinion is worse in many ways.
• Mass casualties for less strategy in my opinion.  You no longer need that eye for getting your distances correct. 
• Killed skirmishers.
• True line of sight annoys me.
• Cannons.

No,  I don't like this edition.  I really like the core Warhammer rules, but I think they just made the game a lot less fun with tweaks that were not needed.  And the tweaks that were needed, were not made.  I don't like randomness.  Warhammer Ancient Battles 2.0 was what Warhammer Fantasy should have become in my opinion.  And WAB 2 is a heck of a lot more fun and more strategic.  And unfortunately I don't see them ever going back to the core.  I still play the game on occassion because I enjoy playing with the group of local players, but that is about it.

Strange Requests and Merry Christmas

No happy Holidays or I'll start on another long rant....just Merry Christmas. 

I do get some strange requests often here at the Madhouse Workshop.  Most of the time those requests come from relatives.  For instance, my brother-in-law more than likely prompted by my sister requested some stuff for T-shirt emblems for his start up extermination company, something simple for single color printing.  Quite a few years ago I did this on my sisters motorcycle gas tank, all in pen and ink directly on a couple coats of color sanded clear.  Then my father finished it off by shooting more urethane clear coat over the top of it.  This was more to what I like to draw.  The flames and pearl paint was my Dad's handwork.

So, at first my brother-in-law wanted a Jiminy Cricket drawn up holding a spray can and then he wanted some darker.  Well I can do darker, but cartoon characters I'm not sure.  I'm about a month and half behind on the artwork so he's going to get it this weekend.

Yea, I know that looks really goofy.  I could not even remember what Jiminy Cricket even looked like.  I think I'm going to break my pens after doing this.  I have a bit of clean up to do and such.  Both of these are Pen/Brush and India Inks. 

My scanner is very much a weenie, can figure it out sometimes and its only a 8 1/2 x 11 flatbed, so chopped some stuff off.  The slightly darker one has his "All Gone Pest Control"  in a nice curved pattern with some spider webbing.  Its about the size of the back of T-shirt for a Large.  Still have a bit of touch up to do.  Will probably just use a sharpie to lettering, this was close to being all pen work with the exception of the lettering fill in which I did with a brush. Yea the old fashioned way of doing things.

What's next...I suppose my niece will want me draw Harry Potter....aaarrrrgggghhhh.....

Follow Me! Next Chaos Spacemarine conversion

I said follow my long fingers.  The possessed bits are very awesome looking pieces.  I don't follow Bolter & Chainsword as much as I used to so I don't know if a lot of chaos players use them for normal marines or not.

I thought this made for an interesting pose.  And I do like this head.  A lot times your conversions do not need to be completely over the top.  Very subtle ones often work, and give you that dynamic that you are looking for.

Next...Slaanesh Chaos Spacemarine

I don't know how long that I've had the Slaanesh champion backpack and sword arm.  Its sat in the box for an extremely long time.

I have a slaanesh spacemarine head that is a bit different, it will get used on another conversion.  So I decided to make a head that looks similar.  You also notice if you closely that this model actually has a set of abs inside of the GS girdle.

Plasma pistol from the berzerker sprue.

The GS girdle / belt uses techniques shown in my GS Tutorial for making armored plates. Found at the following links:
http://psychosispc-themadhouseworkshop.blogspot.com/2009/09/next-step-plate-making.html
http://psychosispc-themadhouseworkshop.blogspot.com/2009/09/continuing-armor-plate-tutorial.html

 

And again a draping on the leg.  The next Slaanesh mini will be in a much cooler pose.

Chaos Space Marine Conversion...The Basher

As with the previous marine, I'm digging deep in the bitz box and found this power maul.  Very appropriate for bashing thos Imperial Loyalists.

I also love this head, it screams chaos to me.   The drapings like the previous one are using similar techniques to my tutorial on sculpting cloth with GS.  http://psychosispc-themadhouseworkshop.blogspot.com/2011/12/green-stuff-cloth-tutorial-space.html

The rivets/pins that look to be holding the cloth are done with a mechanical pencil.  The spikes are favorite thing of mine for adding to the backpacks, they come from the chaos vehicle spike sprue.

Surprise Warhammer Ancients Fans...NEW SUPPLEMENT

Armies of Antiquity has been released as a supplement to the WAB 2.0 Rulebook.  This was like BAAAMMM!!! right up the side of my head.  I never saw it coming.

Warhammer Armies of Antiquity is a supplement for Warhammer Ancient Battles second edition.  The 208 page hardback book contains no fewer than 100 fully revised and updated army lists for the following forces from the ancient and medieval world.

Awesome.  So how does that affect Adepticon?  In my correspondence with Rich over at the Chicago Terrain Factory Blog, it appears that it will be used in conjunction with the existing supplements.  Official word will have to come from him and Adepticon.  Until then I need to get my grubby paws on this book.