Messages in the Darkness: January 2021

Happy New Year! I've just had a week off work and I always end up losing my hobby routine in those situations so I never wrapped up the Advent painting challenge.

We failed in our task of painting 24 minis over 24 days unfortunately. Some of the minis took longer than expected, but also we had less hobby time than we expected. In this new pandemic-filled world we found ourselves with all kinds of strange new social conventions, such as constantly being on Skype to friends and family - not to mention the usual work stresses that come with working from home. It's very easy to accidentally work late when you don't have a commute.

We did manage to finish a fair few of the Advent miniatures - my favourite of which being Geralt of Rivia. An OOP Artel W Miniature that's been sitting around in my to-do list for a few years. Laura and I will be starting a Witcher themed Frostgrave campaign soon so he'll be making an appearance in various missions I'm sure.

Without further ado, here's the rest of the miniatures we managed to paint during the build up to Christmas:

Day 5

Geralt of Rivia - Tom

Day 6

Box of fish - Laura

Day 7

Archery Target - Tom

Day 8

Brigand - Laura

Day 9

Cryopod - Tom

Day 10

Sack of potatoes - Laura

Day 11

Training dummy - Tom

Day 12

Elf archer - Laura

Day 13

Adventurer with lantern - Tom

Day 14

Box of vegetables - Laura

Day 15

Merchant - Tom

And here's where we slacked and failed to finish the rest. We started on a couple of them (and I got most of them primed) but we didn't manage to complete any more. I did get distracted by other projects which was a bit foolish, but we still ended up with a decent selection of painted models in the end so I'm happy.

You might notice there's actually more than 24 models in these final pictures. That's because some of the advent boxes contained more than one model, just to make it harder on ourselves - I guess we were too ambitious!

The other projects I got distracted by included making a modular 2x2 foot sci-fi terrain board for sci-fi skirmish games. I'm still in the process of painting it, and am going for an abandoned martian industrial facility theme. Hopefully it should suit 40k, Star Wars (think Kessel) and Infinity.

I used some bits I was gifted from my friend Rick (who has an excellent blog, check it out here: https://thegrumpygnome.home.blog ) as well as some other bits I've gathered over the years. The hills are made from XPS foam and modelling compound (plaster mixed with cloth fibre).

I also printed a large spaceship for Star Wars gaming, and have been painting up a smaller one (also for Star Wars gaming). The smaller one is clearly inspired by the Razor Crest from the Mandalorian, but I wanted to give it a different look while retaining the lived-in Star Wars feel.