February has been and gone. I had some fun painting my Gretchin and nephew Space Marines, but they’re not done yet.
Partly this is because I am slow and partly because of all the travelling. A large reason is all the crazy tidying that is finally happening in the house. A lot of my Ex’s stuff is still here, more than five years after she left, so that is being boxed up. I’m a bit of a hoarder, so there’s a lot to do.
One thing was to bring the box with the bag in down from the loft. About six or so years ago, following some dreadful argument about something or other, my now Ex took all my hobby stuff that was on a shelf upstairs, put it in a big bin bag and dropped it into the bin outside.
Obviously I retrieved the bin bag at the time, and so it went into the loft, where it would be safer. It has been well past time that I took it down, emptied it out, and sorted out the damage, if any.
Here are all of its contents on the kitchen table:
There’s a lot there! It was a lot like Christmas as I pulled model after model from the depths of the bag. This was particularly so because there were a few models I had forgotten that I had bought!
Overall there are models from two different forces in all of 40k, Fantasy, Lord of the Rings and Epic Armageddon.
In this picture you can see the Tau crisis suit with two gun drones that is painted to a basic level. There’s no highlighting or shading, but I think it looks a lot better than unpainted, and I’d be happy to have an army painted that well. I can work on fancy techniques later!
You should also be able to make out the parts for a rider of Rohan, and some assembled Kroot.
Then we have my Epic Eldar. I love the detail and style of the Epic Falcons and Vipers. As you can see I was heading for an Iyanden army.
In the foreground are some Epic Orks, based on 40mm round bases, where I’ve used polyfilla and stones to make the bases more interesting.
There follows Eowyn and some more Epic Orks. Eowyn and Faramir were my Ex’s two favourite characters from the Lord of the Rings, and I was secretly painting Eowyn as a present for her at the time this all ended up in the bin. Which is a bit unfortunate. I don’t think I ever told her that, but I guess I’ll keep Eowyn to lead my Riders of Rohan now.
The next photo shows an Imperial Pegasus, Space Marine Dreadnought and parts for an Averland Mordheim warband.
The assembled dreadnought, with assault cannon and close combat weapon, was one of the surprises in the bag. I know I have a Bjorn the Fell-handed somewhere and a Furioso dread, but I had forgotten about this one.
Other surprise models included a Beastman beastlord with great weapon, a pair of Empire wizards and Balthasar Gelt!
The Imperial Pegasus is now oop, I think. Mine came with a hole in the wing, through which I tried to put an arrow – but this has now broken.
The handgunner parts I found are one of the really old sets that came with metal arms and handguns to convert the 16 plastic state troops – shown in this photo – is that a standard as part of a command group? I also had some crossbowmen in this style, but I’m pretty sure they were actually assembled and spray-painted white.
I have so many plastic handgunners from the 6th edition starter set, and perhaps also some all-metal ones, that I think I might end up making these into swordsmen or halberdiers and not use the metal bits.
Not surprisingly, having all this stuff dumped in the bin put a stop toy hobby activity for a while. It was the release of the current Ork codex that tempted me back in, but that of course involved starting yet another new project, before any of the previous ones were finished.
I feel so lucky now to have a girlfriend who encourages me to spend time painting models. I don’t have to worry that she will throw it all out.
