Back in Black (and red, and purple...)

I'm well and truly back in my game room, having successfully stopped battling 12-year olds for dominance of Black Ops II's multiplayer servers.

It's amazing how obnoxious people can get.  You've got these kids who haven't quite hit puberty spout off the most vile racial slurs imaginable, all while dropping the F-Bomb every other word.  Worse sometimes are the adults.  The other day, I was on at 3 in the morning (insomnia) with some guys in Europe.  This Brit couldn't quite take losing, so obviously somebody had to be cheating.  Or camping.  Or using the wrong gun.

Whatever.  I make use of the Twit Filter often.

(The mute button.  By the way, Aliens Colonial Marines sucks and Dead Space III is fun.  More fun is cranking out models.)

Oh, yeah.  The game room.  Kinda a mess to be honest...

...but who has time to clean?  I've got models waiting.

Miniatures from Other Ranges

Right now I'm putting the finishing touches on a commission army, but my head is in a couple other places besides.

One: Infinity models!  I've got 7 painted and 6 in the works.  It's nice to have a project you can take from start to finish in with so few models...

...problem alert!  Corvus Belli has a HUGE range of Haqqislam miniatures, and admittedly I have a real plastic and metal addiction problem.  My goal, moving forward, is to limit my sickness to one army in a particular range.

With Infinity, the aforementioned Haqqis.  With Warmachine, the Protectorate; with Hordes, the Circle.  Though admittedly I include Mercenaries and Minions in the Privateer Press range, allowing myself some wiggle room for manic-purchasing.

With Confrontation - forget about it!  Every weekend we break out that dead game has me cruising Ebay looking for long OOP models.  That I never get a chance to use.  *sigh*

Which brings me to my second thought; using models across systems.  I've picked up the following models to use in my Inquisitor's Warband, hopefully giving it some additional character.  (Keep in mind, I haven't painted mine - these are downloads from the respective publisher's site.)

I've picked up some lady-friends for my Psyker Pimp.  I guess he's withholding toys for tots, or something.

This dude screams, "Badass!"  Not sure why he screams it, but there you go.

This model I converted to use as a Xenos Inquisitor.  He looked suitably different from existing models while still maintaining a certain stature.  Naturally, this one required some conversion work.

Anyway, that's where my head is at, as I finish up the Tim That Can's daemons this week.  Thoughts?

Finished Brotherhood Version of Lysander...

...well, except for his shield.

And maybe his heraldry.

And, you know, I plan to do freehand.

But I got three more models for the Haqqislam army I'm putting together...

...so this is done for the time being!

Mmm... looking over these photos and comparing them to yesterday, when I tightened up the blends on the shoulder pads they became a bit more blue than I would have liked.  I washed the hammer just slightly with black, which I'm happy with, but the wash on the shoulder pads was perhaps a bit too much.

But I'm airbrushing red onto a model... no pictures of my version of her, just yet but she's front and center in this class pic:

Who said the women of New Islam can't have a bit of a manga flair?

Busting Out of the Rut

I was reading a John Constantine graphic novel this morning, and Epiphany told John it was good for him to hang out with someone younger because "You older guys can get caught in a rut."

That's been me, lately.  Stuck in a rut.  My normal habit for years now has been to paint or model daily, not to mention the whole blogging thing over the past three or so years.  Last two months, not so much.

Anyway, with work lightening up and some local interest in a new game (Infinity), I'm forcing myself to put down the game controller or book and pick back up a paint brush.

Here's what I'm working on now - something unnecessary!

Not quite done here - there's nothing like taking a picture to make all the flaws on a model evident.  I've got to tighten up the blends on the shoulder pads, for one thing, and of course I need to paint the Storm Shield.  I'm planning some sort of heraldry for the chest plate, but I haven't decided what yet.

I mentioned unnecessary... I'm not actually playing the Brotherhood lately, and this model isn't necessary in the army I would run!

Anyway, off to work.

Infinity Addendum; Videos from YouTube

As an addendum to the Infinity article I posted on Bell of Lost Souls today, here's some videos.  Thanks to Gauthic for the email, and making it easy to get back posting on Strictly Average!

It'll be interesting to see how quickly I can get this blog steaming along again, since right now it's deader than a doornail.  Interestingly, for the first month of practically no content it maintained somewhat well.

Not so much in January!  I'm not really that worried about it... as evidenced by not even trying to swing at the slow pitches... because in the end the motivation and time just wasn't there.  In fact, in two plus decades of this hobby I've never been this apathetic.  Maybe I'll explore that, maybe not.

Moving on, here are the Infinity videos - I'm off to watch them now!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNe1P6jLLLE - How to Play 1  (3:10)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PaT-pu5Ro68 - How To Play 2 (2:53)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxl__iJTn8s - How to Play 3 (3:30)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3YBW3Xuq1c - Impetuous Orders (3:29)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owKOt7O9J98 - Smoke Grenades (5:25)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPQCI1VlSj4 - Camouflage and Hiding (3:00)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bWWveKGi1c - Camouflage and Hiding 2 (1:53)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kKStC-fVV_c  - Camouflage and Hiding 3 (1:56)