November 2021 WIP

 A rare sighting in my hobby life this morning...the bottom of a pot of GW paint.  Probably only the second or third pot I've ever actually finished in almost thirty years of hobbying.  Only painted consistently the last ten months so the math probably checks out.  A good deal of paint dried in the lid and top of the pot but a majority of the Lead Belcher made it onto gun barrels, servo arms, etc.

Working on some conversions and porting over a D&D miniature as an underhive beast. Left to right:

• Trying to turn a Reaper ork into Rattus Tatterskin. Basic pose is there. Need to find a good heavy stubber and add lots of rats, candles, face mask, etc.

• Making a Reaper necromancer into a twin chain axe murderpriest for a Cawdor/Redemptionist gang. Darn Sump City Radio always given me ideas.

• D&D Brain Collector seems like a good Underhive or sump beast. More thought and paint needed as always.

• A mix of Reaper Bones and Hasslefree barbarians for use as a Ratskins gang. Can't decide if I should try using chaos helot gang rules or come up with something else to base the conversions on.

2021 Hobby Plans

The 2021 Necromunda roadmap guided my thinking about my hobby plans for the year.  2020 was the most productive hobby year for me so far in in 25 years of 40K and Necromunda buying and modeling.  Still not a lot compared to the properly productive hobbyists out there but much better than my earlier efforts.  Midwinter Minis and Sonic Sledgehammer Studios helped me overcome my aversion to painting while Eric's Hobby Workshop illustrated a practical approach to scratch terrain making that I hope to explore over the course of the coming year.  Hobby inspiration and advice will continue to come from the blogs and videos of many great hobbyists with regular visits to Matakishi's Tea House, Black Magic Craft, Miscast, Pulp Alley and Convert or Die among many others.

The plan is to draft off the roadmap and use it to guide for both Necromunda purchases and hobbying for the year.

• 2021 1st Quarter:  
• Hobby plans: 
• Write a Van Saar gang list for the start of a campaign, model and paint it.
• Use Mechanicus models to run a counts as Van Saar gang.
• Model and paint 2 underhive citizens a month.  Could be vendors, factorum workers, guilders, etc.
• Purchase models, if need be, from smaller manufacturers.
• Terrain:
• Assemble Promethium Forge terrain.
• Build and paint a gang territory terrain piece (Stinger Mold Sprawl, Refuse Drift, etc.) using scratch built techniques combined with mdf and plastic terrain if need be.
• Purchase plans: 
• Cawdor gang
• Cawdor and Escher gang champion FW weapon packs
• Escher Death Maidens and Wyld Runners
• Khainite Shadowstalkers
• 2021 2nd Quarter:
• Hobby plans:
• Write a Cawdor gang list for the start of a campaign, model and paint it.
• Model and paint 2 underhive citizens a month.  Could be vendors, factorum workers, guilders, etc.
• Assemble Promethium Forge terrain.
• Build and paint a gang territory terrain piece (Stinger Mold Sprawl, Refuse Drift, etc.) using scratch built techniques combined with mdf and plastic terrain if need be.
• Purchase plans:
• Book of Faith
• 2021 3rd Quarter:
• Hobby plans:
• Write a Delaque gang list for the start of a campaign, model and paint it.
• Model the gang as an Inquisitor and their retinue.
• Model and paint 2 underhive citizens a month.  Could be vendors, factorum workers, guilders, etc.
• Paint Promethium Forge terrain.
• Build and paint a gang territory terrain piece (Stinger Mold Sprawl, Refuse Drift, etc.) using scratch built techniques combined with mdf and plastic terrain if need be.
• Purchase plans:
• Book of Shadows
• 2021 4th Quarter:
• Hobby plans:
• Model and paint 2 underhive citizens a month.  Could be vendors, factorum workers, guilders, etc.
• Paint Promethium Forge terrain.
• Build and paint a gang territory terrain piece (Stinger Mold Sprawl, Refuse Drift, etc.) using scratch built techniques combined with mdf and plastic terrain if need be.
• Purchase plans:
• ???

Yaktribe's 2021 Finish Your Stuff Challenge will hopefully provide a mechanism to focus some hobby work on my many unfinished hobby projects over the course of the year.  Their quarterly contests will allow for some unplanned modeling opportunities if I get an idea.  Finally, I'll hopefully have a number of episodes of Sump City Radio and Dome Runners to help with my learning of the Necromunda game mechanics while enjoying their creative segments featuring inhabitants of the underhive and the misadventures.

Cawdor Modeling

So another long gap in posting to my hobby blog.  My hobbying has its fits and starts.  Documenting it even more so.  

I've really been enjoying the Convert or Die hobby blog over the course of 2020.  It's one of many that set a great hobby example in tone, detail and productivity.  Recently he posted his tenth in a series of updates about his Cawdor modeling which got me thinking about the models I had in my hobby closet.  Turns out I had even more than I remembered.

I built the box of Cawdor I bought when it was released right away and tried to work in other weapons in a bid to have more extras to spread across additional gangers converted from zombie bodies and Frostgrave cultists. 

That plan kind of worked but the current Cawdor bodies are so distinct, though, and I haven't found a good way to even come close to capturing the unbalanced, scruffy, scrawny aesthetic they embody.  Here's the other dozen or more "Cawdor Lite" models that have the ramshackle weapon aesthetic but not the body type.  You can see where I hit the pause button having run out of ideas and/or enthusiasm.  Looking at the metal Cawdor models picked up in auction purchases over the years I can only think they are destined to be Redemptionists since they all look too burly and well fed to be current Cawdor.

At least the Stig-Shamblers pretty much look the part.  Mis-matched hulking brute captained by a scrawny malicious minder.

I am very much enjoying the "House of..." books so far in 2020 and looking forward to seeing where "House of Faith" takes the Cawdor.  My 2021 hobby plans include trying to get some more Cawdor models and bits in place to add to the gang once their book is out in Q2.  Until then there's plenty to finish modeling and painting.

Steel Legion Reinforcements

Some reinforcements for my Steel Legion force arrived this week from Victoria Miniatures.  One of their Kangaroo APC miniatures purchased as part of the excellent fund raiser they organized in January in response to the massive brush fires in Australia.  They also have an ever growing collection of wonderfully characterful miniatures that can be added, for free, to orders for each $50 US in the order.  I was able to pick up two of my favorites in the set along with a mortar battery on wheeled chassis that make more sense to me if I am going to model my Steel Legion force as mostly mobile infantry.

Dribs and drabs of painting done in the last week or so but not much progress on squad 2 of the Steel Legion blocking in the main colors.  I primed some models last weekend to give me options to paint when I tire of guardsmen but only a bit of paint put on two small models from those models.  I did look through another box of conversions and bits for warband models for Cardinal Vindrix and there are some potential entourage members I will try to organize into a unit under the old Agents of the Imperium codex.  I hope the Inquisition get a more robust set of rules building off the White Dwarf article at the end of 2019.

Cawdor gangers made from GSC, zombie and Frostgrave Cultist bodies.