Well this place has lain fallow for more than a decade. I never exactly stopped painting or what have you but I did mostly stop blogging about it.

      Since I last posted, Privateer Press sold the IP for Warmachine and Hordes to Steamforged Games who have begun to try and revive Warmachine from the grave they dug by switching up editions too quickly and going over to 3D printed models. Mostly what killed Warmachine was a decent rules set for Warhammer 40k, though admittedly this is largely based on my own limited point of view. I did not stop wanting to play warmachine, but I had trouble finding the time to play any wargames. Seems like I have the time to play wargames or play D&D but not both.

    Right now I am back on a wargame stage and working on resurrecting and painting the Ork army previously shown. I have not picked up any new models, but I have picked up a few tricks and tried them out with regard to painting and modelling. 

    You have to keep learning or what is the point. I am giving the Orks a shot again, though reading some of my old blog content makes me worry about how much actual fun it will be. 

The Green Tide of 120 ork boyz is the goal, though for now I am only going to field 100. Plus a few squads of specialists like Stormboyz, Sneaky Gits, Burnaz...Nobz of course, oh and a couple of units of Gretchin. I am expecting to lose at first just because you gotta learn somehow, but with the game having a lot more about taking objectives and not just wiping out the enemy, and the changes to AOE, I think I might have a shot at some wins.

One thing I did this time that I had not done in the past was to play around with AI as a sounding board for a new basing scheme. Here are the images the AI generated.

Post War/Post Industrial

So far, I have not been able to pull it off exactly and have ended up with something mixing broken concrete, metal plate, and soil reminiscent of a local iron mine near me...or as close to it as I can manage.

I will post some pics when the models are done on a unit by unit basis.

Circle Orboros Rising Up

Being unemployed has added a lot of ability to get some painting done so here are some of my Circle Figs.

My take on a Warpwolf with Protective Plates.

 Spines are all sculpted from greenstuff with a paperclip armature.

 This wolf is my first real attempt to use wet blending. I am happy with the overall effect.

 Love this model. Not a perfect job and I plan to redo him once I master wet blending but certainly a decent looking figure for playing with.

 E Kaya probably could have gotten some more time spent on her. I may go back and do a light wash to mute the highlights on the cloak.

 My thinking on the staff was that it would be the root of a tree carved into a blade and perhaps shaped by druidic magic. I did try a woodgrain effect but could not really find a satisfactory angle for the grain to cross at.

Moving to the Three Fold Land

So here am I in the desert. I have been here for a couple of months and it took nearly that long for me to get a painting table set up. Since then I have only done a bit of work on my Circle Bloodtrackers and a test paint of a space wolf scout to see if the primer I bought worked. Finally getting a job has taken some of the wieght off my shoulders as far as daily angst and I hope to be back to painting regularly soon. Chairs are so important and should never be taken for granted. Having only one in the house has made the logistics of getting anything done tricky but now that I have the days to myself and no need to spend hours poring over want ads hope springs eternal.

A few models for people to look at if they like.

Here are a few assorted models I painted up at various times over the last year or so.

Kaya the Wildborne turned out fairly well given that I lost her left arm and had to sculpt one for her from scratch.

The Blue Fellow is a model from a game called Vor the Maelstrom. He is a proxy for a Gorax until I pick up the new one...the old one was not among my favorite models.

Here we have an old Warhammer FB Ogre, and my wife's Dwarven cleric from a brief and ill fated DnD campaign...damned kobolds.

The Horde of Hormagaunts.

I recently started doing some commision painting to raise a few dollars while I am between jobs. The Horde of Hormagaunts is my largest single job to date in terms of models. The only pieces I painted in this first one are the 100 hormagaunts filling up the two shelves. All other pieces were done by a variety of other companies.

These next few shots are the Gaunts in progress, actually some images I sent to the client as test samples for the color scheme. He elected to go a bit more yellowish for the back armour but quite liked the bone claws in preference to the black talons that some of his other peices had been given.

State of Waaaagh

It has been months since I posted to this blog. I realize that is kind of normal for some and abhorrent to others but it is what it is. I got into Warmachine/Hordes over the summer and sort of focused what little painting energy I had on that.
I recently played a 2k battle of 40k with my Orks vs some Nids. I lost. This is not the worst part. It was a really close game...a few dice rolls one way or the other and it might have come out a win. But I was bored. I was bored at moving my dozens of boyz, bored shooting, bored fighting, bored looking up obscure and convoluted rules for a game that used to represent a couple of generals mastering forces across a battlefield and having a tactical and challenging game. Now, I see min maxing, I see unstoppable monsters and special characters. I see space marine armies witH hardly any marines in it and I just think....I would rather be playing war machine, or watching TV, or just about anything other than playing this broken boring souless version of a game I used to love.
Maybe it is not the game, maybe I have just descended into beardiness, maybe I am just bitter about my favorite army. Honestly though I just think there are better games than 40k. I look forward to playing some fantasy battles and maybe 6th edition and a new codex will redeem the hobby for me. For now though I am setting aside my boyz and focusing on the beasts of the Circle of Orboros and the zealots of the Protectorate of Menoth.
Thanks for reading and I truly hope to return to regularly posting on this site.
Rob 'Grokka' Ferrick

Summertime Blues

I have not really been getting any painting done on my orks or anything else for a bit. Real life issues getting in the way and other interests with the warmer weather serving to distract me have come up here and there.