Mostly just minis this time

Yeah, fewer ponderances on life and attitude and all that, just gonna talk 'bout some minis this time.

Unless something creeps in, anyway.  It's a gamble.

First, I managed to finish off the trees that were the custom-build ones! Now all I've got left to finish are the... 9(?) smaller armature trees. I didn't get the other one I had completed out of the storage bucket for this pic, so it's the five I completed over last weekened with two of the finished armature ones in the middle for scale.

Overall super happy with how they're turning out, and they should help make a woodland/forest/ghur style of board really have some character without being cumbersome.

The metal washers worked out surprisingly well and the trees are quite sturdy!

Why yes, I did say "ghur" up there, glad of you to notice! My good buddy Dingar (who started his own blog called Mininomicon... check it out!) has been pretty amped on Age of Sigmar for a while now, and his joy and positivity has proven infectious to myself and Wargamer Ramblings so now, of course, we're working on armies for yet another game.  I actually already have a fully painted (well, like, almost fully painted) force of Ogor Gutbusters who reside in the Realm of Beasts - aka Ghur - but I've decided on painting up my forces of order now as well. I have some Stormcast Eternals that I am going to play as the Astral Templars stormhost chamber, as they also reside in the realm of beasts and thrive on honorbound battle with gigantic monsters and all that. 

I will probably take some liberties on the paint scheme once I get started, but overall this is their scheme.

Otherwise, I've been continuing to spend some time on NOVA prep, working on the beginnings of my 30k Zone Mortalis force and my Guild Ball Miners.  

For my 30k force, I've concretely decided on a Word Bearers squad with Zardu Layak, the Crimson Apostle, as its leader. A hardened taskforce of breacher marines and the Apostle's private retinue of relic reclaimers (a typical marine strike squad I am converting to look more cultish) accompany Zardu and his blade slaves and a Chaplain-in-training (run as a simple Centurion with the WB special rules to make him a psyker) to comprise the majority of the force, with the final piece being a unit of Gal Vorbak intent on screaming through the corridors and killing anything in their path. I'm trying to keep it very fluff-driven, so I don't think the list will end up varying too much even if it doesn't fair well in test games. I've also just learned a few days ago that summoning in 30k events is completely legal, so I'll need to get a unit of Pink Horrors painted up just in case I pull off a successful summoning in game.

Laying out all of the pieces for the Breachers and getting them organized. Yes that's a Monsterpocalypse mini in the background. Yes I have an addiction problem. 

Partially assembled; I was really surprised at the detail and number of pieces, kind of blowing my time estimate out of the water for their assembly. 

After several nights of assembly (about an hour each night) the Breachers stand ready for paint!

Airbrushed basecoat completed with the color Vallejo Air "Fire Red"

Now on to the Guild Ball Miners.

So.

Let's say this is a... mini review. 

As someone returning (though even that isn't a fair term, since I never really got off the ground in the first place) to the game of Guild Ball in general, this faction's release is difficult and frustrating.

First of all, this thing is only available to order directly from Steamforged games, even for gaming stores (at least as I've been lead to understand). And those gaming stores, when ordering it direct, are not given much of a discount on the item, which means they are not able to discount it from the "suggested" retail price of a steep, steep $80 USD. After resolving myself to spending the money on the box and having seen the quality of the miniatures in the Kick Off! starter box, I went to Steamforged's website to order. Nope, sold out. Too bad so sad no team for me. I began to look for options of sellers here stateside, and found only a single one (Discount Games, Inc.), and the price was still the non-discounted $80 USD. Gritting my teeth, I clicked the "Confirm" button and waited on my order to arrive.

Upon arrival, I found a very small box waiting for me. Like, Infinity miniatures boxes small. Confused, because I've seen the production quality of their other newer products, I pulled the sleeve off of the little cardboard box and popped it open to find a handful of unassembled minis in baggies. I'm clearly no stranger to assembling miniatures, and honestly I enjoy it quite a bit, but I will say the presentation was lacking for something I just dropped eighty-frigging-dollars on.

Pulling out the baggies, I found each miniature separated and including a resin base. 

Quality of the resin aside for a moment (but I'm coming back to it, don't worry) let's just say this to be clear: the included bases are bullshit. They're weirdly flat/low compared to normal lipped bases, they have no interesting or uniquely sculpted detail, and they have little depressions in them for the models to fit down into during assembly. That last part is only a problem because the models themselves have little bits of extra height attached at the bottoms of the feet and the tank treads to sit down in those depressions, and it's got to be addressed before using a different base. At least half of mine were warped and would have required me to heat them up and bend them to make them sit flat on the table, had I found myself willing to use them. You'll find this to be a common theme here, but lemme just say it one more time... this was an $80 box! That's U.S. dollars, not AUD. I understand price comparisons between companies in this hobby is a fool's errand, but a box with six models and tiny piece of terrain or two that costs eighty dollars should have sculpted bases. 

So, back to resin quality. I'm going to give it an "It's Fine I Guess" out of 10. It's not as great as, say, Privateer Press's resin, but the detail is still pretty good. Is it $80 good? No, not even a little bit. It's soft and reminds me of a #2 pencil eraser, and it has a lot of flash and places where the gates need be trimmed delicately so as not to destroy the cool details. Mine had a couple of ugly mold lines, too, which I found needed to be cut down (eww) because the resin did not take well to being filed. I have concerns about the lifespan on the smaller, thinner models, too. At least it was relatively bubble-free.

I really wish they had just kept their nice metal models if they weren't going to make something in the awesome plastics from their other (cheaper!) box sets.

Okay, some pictures:

Super irritated that this little ball of joy is sculpted into his shitty base. Look at that terrible mold line around the lip!

His base isn't perfectly round, either. I've done no trimming whatsoever here, it came that way. 

The Word Bearers champion might look like he's engaged in a fierce battle, but he's actually just being a bro and holding the weight of the drill in place while the glue/greenstuff dries.

Oh neat, look at this cool wood detailing in the prominently visible shoulder piece on the coolest model in the set... and the big mar in it from the resin gate being in the fucking middle of it. Who thought that was a good plan when designing the mold!?  

I mean let's be honest, I still love the set. I'm excited to get to playing Guild Ball, and these guys are definitely the faction for me aesthetically. But this should not be an $80 box. $50 would be a much more reasonable price point for the quality/quantity presented here, and $60 would be pushing it. At $60 I'd need to see like a couple of cool custom dice in the box, or maybe some friggin cards (yeah I know, I know, available online, but that just means I have to print them and cut them and deal with it and that frustrates me), hell maybe an art card, I dunno. Something more than just a cardboard box with baggies in it.

Overall super rad models, but would have much rather had them just be metal.

Oh, that reminds me. One more thing, while this rant train is a-rollin'.

Look at this badass thing:

Oh hey there coolest model for the Miners that isn't actually in the starter box.

So that's Colossus, one of the existing players for the Engineering Guild, and one of the two players that can be used with the Miners. That is an alt sculpt for him, designed to go explicitly with the Miners... and you cannot buy him. That's fucking stupid.

If you're a diehard Steamforged defender and you're reading this, please don't be offended or take this to mean I don't like Steamforged, or Guild Ball, or even just that model. Quite the contrary, actually. I love the shit out of that Colossus model.  It's actually one of the reasons this faction interested me and was able to pull me back to Guild Ball in the first place in this article reveal of the faction!  But he's only available, I'm told (as per the Facebook group), in the OP event kit. Seeing as this game has no scene in my area, no stores around here sell it at all, and I only have one other friend locally I can play it with... I cannot get this model without significant travel and effort. That is super frustrating. Do not like.

Okay, so bitching aside, that's pretty much the last couple of weeks for me outside of mega busy life stuff. Looking forward to trying to get more built and painted in the days to come, lord knows I have a lot to work on!