Nope no painting this evening as I needed to get some things sliced ASAP. I also got the remaining Reiklanders sliced too. Prepare for some gratuitous photos this weekend.

After various chores I decided to have another look through my Christmas present from Joe. Now One hex in The One ring is 20 miles. So it got me thinking of making some more detailed maps for areas of interest. Hence the hex paper.

I also started looking at the 1888 Ordinance Survey maps of the place where I came from in Northumberland/County Durham.

Now I am going to be honest here. My One Ring World has never been canon to Tolkien as I firmly believe that people didn’t just desert places permanently. So mine will have farmsteads, townships and the like… hence the OS maps.

Each of my maps will be 20×40 miles…so a fair old bit of space to fill on each one.

This may be the start of something new or fall by the wayside, but if truth be told I did like making maps in many of my earlier games.

It Wasn’t a bad morning on the way to work today…

Well by now everyone who reads this will have made it into 2023.

I just wanted to wish everyone health, wealth and happiness for 2023.

In February 2022 I decided to call a halt to the daily blog. Well I had got up to 920 days straight.

I was feeling a bit disheartened as I was convinced I had achieved nothing this year hobbywise. I was wrong, over the year I actually achieved quite a bit.

I managed to print and paint an entire undead army that I had totally forgotten about.

I eventually finished off the 6mm Italian Wars stuff I started in 2021. To be fair, the fact I dropped a filament spool into the two Pike blocks I had finished and put a downer on the whole project.

Early in the year I did whole load of 28mm Flintloque miniatures for both my Silver Bayonet games and for my mate.

I also did a whole host of 15mm Sengoku Monster Hunter stuff for my mate as well as made him a host of market stalls for his birthday.

There were loads of other bits and bobs I worked on. The FDM printer made a whole load of terrain and the Resin one worked a lot in printing dwarves for Joe as well as various bits for me and the Geek club.

This is now my 11th day in a row, I doubt I will pass the 920 day record I set myself, but you never know.

So I now have four Warbands printed… I am struggling to choose a one to start with. So it’s over to you guys to help me out…

I have witch-hunters, undead, Sisters of Sigmar and the Possessed

Which would You choose and why?

I am a bit behind as I had to reprint various things as I had some epic print failures as well as completely messing up the scaling up and down notes ( the ones to stop me messing up the scaling up and down. This meant that my flagellants were very tall chaps.

I have done a test print of a rat-man warrior. I just have to glue him together in a bit to see how he looks size wise.

So if you were me, what ‘gang’ would you go for and why?

So if you remember I got a static grass applicator for Christmas

This evening I decided to give it a go. After a total panic that I had left all of my static grass in the Geek Club box in work, I eventually found some. I had this about six years. Ages ago I bought a couple of Serious Play boxes from EBay. Luckily the contents were still in the printer shed.

I started off testing GW 2 or 3mm static grass. I am not sure how long I have had it, but the tub of it cost £4 which would indicate a while. Anyway I tried Geek Gaming Scenics fast drying basing glue As well as Wwscenics basing glue. I am no chemist but to my eyes they are the same stuff.

I then tried Serious Play 4mm and then their 6mm. Sadly the 4mm was a single colour, the 6mil has various tones and looks good.

Finally I had a go at layering the different lengths. Started with the 2 mil. Dotted on glue for the 4 mil and finally went for some dots of 6mm.

I am really chuffed with how well it worked. Layering is definitely the way to go… especially with the colours I have here. I forgot to try just 2 and 4mm to see how that looked. Something to try tomorrow… as well as seeing what other grass I have lying around somewhere.

Now in the past I have used the ebay cheap fly swat and plastic tub variety and have used PVA as that was what j had at the time. To be honest. I should have got one of these from the start, the results after five minutes of messing around speak for themselves. I have decided to get some new grass from WWS as well as some tuft glue and Silicone paper.

If anyone is faintly thinking about these I would go and watch the YouTube channel found Here. I found it super useful.

I also spent a fair old bit of today slicing miniatures based on my Mordheim lists.

So from my viewpoint definitely worth the purchase. If we go back to the undead army I put tufts on everything. My biggest problem was having enough of the same colours. I now have a way to make my own.

I have a list for the following groups…

Skaven, Reikland, Kislevite, dwarf treasure hunters, undead, Sisters of Sigmar, Witch Hunters and the Possessed. At the minute I can print everything above apart from the Kislevites.

These are the start of my Witch Hunter force as well as the Vampire leader of the undead.

Oooh I sound like I am totally commercialised. I did listen and sing along to some carols this morning… so I am not totally a lost cause yet 🙂

I got some chocs and a funky frog front the kids, a One Ring adventure book from Joe, which is really cool as it will give us a lot of game time in the new year.

My good lady listened to my suggestions and I got these…

The kids liked their printed things, which was a bit of a relief.

Hopefully Mr Beardy was good to you all

Well I just wanted to pop on and Wish everyone a Merry Christmas.

Fifty minutes until Mr Beardy comes down the chimney, Which is a bit of a bugger if he tries in the kitchen as we took the stove out, blocked up the hole and put a shelf unit in front of it.

We took the stove out a week before the power was off for a Week which shows my amazing timing.

I hope Santa brings you everything you want. He popped over ours today in a helicopter…

This evening was spent watching ´The Glass Onion’ and painting un festive ghouls…

To make up for it here is something festive -ish!

Yes there are many Epic journeys in history, Marco Polo, Ferdinand Magellan and Christopher Columbus to name a few. Little did I know that my journey this morning would be something close (okay I might be exaggerating a lot). I left the house before 10.00 and returned at 17.45. Why I hear you ask. A bit of shopping and the last few stocking fillers.

Lerwick was absolutely mental. Every single shops had queues outside the door. The Supermarket had actually run out of carrier bags, (I had forgotten to take mine in with me) they were giving out banana boxes.. I actually got  two from the last five in  the store.

I actually did have some success with a 3 foot live  Christmas tree…£6.25 instead of £25.

In the end we got pretty much everything we wanted.

On the hobby front, I managed to get the Batman and Harley finished. I also got some new miniatures glued together and onto bases. Can you guess what the game is going to be…

My son keeps pestering us for a lizard, thankfully we never gave in as five days without power would have been the end of it.

This one should be able to withstand most temperature ranges we get up here…

The snow has gone and the temperature has risen 10 degrees… the downside is the flooding and the odd landslide.

We are slowly returning to normality here. Temperature has jumped from -2° to 7°  and we now have heavy rain and strong winds. I am hoping that the 6 inches of ice up my track dissappear before I try to drive up it tomorrow, but I am not holding my breath.

I feel a bit sorry for the kids at school. They were meant to be doing their musical and sales evening on the 12th the day we lost power for a week. We had one more chance to do it at a concert tomorrow night and that has now been cancelled. They put a lot of planning and effort into making some great games as well as making lots of things to sell.

We can hold the raffle in the new year, but all of their items were Christmas related. We will nox ig up and sell it next year as luckily it will keep, apart from the sweets, but at least they can take them home to share with their families.