Chaplain on Bike

 

I’ve hit a bit of a personal milestone.

I bought this Chaplain on a Bike in 1998, so I have had him hanging around for 15 years taunting me with his lack of paint.

For me this figure personified my issue with unpainted models and the very reason I started my Clean Slate Challenge. So to get my oldest unpainted model completed was a big deal to me, even if in reality he is just another model on a bike .

I won’t tell you how to paint Chaplains again, as I’ve painted a few in the challenge already, but its a nice simple paint job that looks pretty effective on the tabletop.

Is he the best painted? No, but he is one of the miniatures I’m happiest to see come of the list.

15mm

As it’s officially been a year I decided to take a break from the Clean Slate Challenge, and paint myself something a little different, because I deserve it.

I have some 15mm sci-fi models that I bought from www.15mm.co.uk during one of their special offers (they always seem to be doing great deals on different things, at the time of writing I believe they are offering 15% off everything on the site!).

15mm models offer you a great opportunity to collect a small force/army for a similar price point to a single unit in other 28mm scale games.  The detail is not as high as on the 28mm scale models, but then you also have a lot less to paint, and their small scale can help to hide a lack of painting skills as they are just too small to do anything fancy with.

I picked up some 15mm post apocalyptic survivors, and the U.S.E.M.E. rules for Post Apocalyptic Skirmish games for around £10. Now I don’t know of many other games out there where your entry level cost to play is £10, I personally felt it was  a bargain.  I already had some models 15mm sci-fi models in my box just waiting to be painted as Judges from Judge Dredd so I painted all these 15mm models in one night.

 

The U.S.E.M.E. system are designed to be really fast, fun and easy to learn and play, but they provide a surprising level of complexity when you start adding in all the advanced rules. I would recommend anyone to pick up a book (which will set you back less than the cost of a pint down the pub) and just fun to play, without having to worry about FAQ’s, power gaming or any of that kind of rubbish you can get caught up in. You can even use them with 28mm models with a few tweaks here and there, which is great because I have a lot (and I mean a lot) of 28 models sitting around.

If you get the urge to try something different, but don’t want to break the bank, have a look around at what’s available for 15mm, because there are simply loads of independent miniature modellers out there producing  great models, and loads of really interesting rules systems to try out

 

Happy Birthday to my Clean Slate Challenge

It was exactly a year ago last Friday that I started work on this project. Unfortuneatly with work, social and family commitments this is the first chance I’ve had to get on a computer and write a post.

Firstly thanks to everyone who has come on and had a look around my blog over the year, because it’s really encouraging for me to see that someone has taken the time to look at my articles and pictures. So again thank you to everyone who has visited, helped, advised or given me words of encouragement over the year.

I was really wanting to get everything painted before the end of the year, and I’m sorry but that didn’t happen. Instead I pushed myself to get as much done as I could, and I managed to get another eleven models completed off the list. This has left me tantalisingly close to completion, with just nine models left to paint.

In the big scheme of things that’s really not so bad.

  

Over the last few days I’ve managed to get my five Drakkarim models painted (and yes they are pink as requested by Dan, who kindly gave them to me for my Birthday on the understanding that they would be painted pink), an Imperial Priest, the last two Hasselfree miniatures, who bear an uncanny resemblance to the guys from Shaun of the Dead, and I painted and converted two of the three Space Marine Sergeants into Plasmagunner Space Marines for my Dark Angles army (one of the three sergeants  was so badly damaged after stripping I had to throw him away, as he was unsalvageable) .

All in all it was a pretty good attempt at getting as many models finished before the year was up.

lets have a look at how the list currently shapes up:

Things Left To Paint:

3x Ravenwing Bikes

1x Dark Angel Captain

1x Space Marine Captain

1x Librarian

1x Converted Marine Standard Bearer

1x Chaplain on a Bike

1x Cthulhu

This is a total of 9 models left to paint from an original list of 378, meaning I’ve painted a total of 369 models so far.

That means I’m 97.6% complete.

Now I agree that’s not the 100% we were looking for, but what’s 2.4% between friends.

So what happens now?

I plan to finish these last 9 models in the next month and then I can start looking at the future. I’ve lots of fantasy models to paint from Mantic, as I did their Kings of War Kickstarter, I have few 15mm models that need finishing off too.

What I think I will most likely be doing is ‘project based’ work for 40K; so for example I want to do a Veteran Squad with Combi-Weapons for my Dark Angels, and I can now plan and execute that project in one go, without being held back by being distracted by all other things that need to be finished off first.

Yes I will still keep updating the blog as I get these ‘projects’ completed, as I know the reality is that any 40K army is never really finished, you are just pausing between the painting new units.

Thanks again for reading

Andrew   

The big push at the end of the year, and image dump.

It’s almost been a year!

I started working on my Clean Slate Challenge on October the 11th 2012, and wow the year’s gone quickly.

I wanted to get all my models painted in a year, and I have to facet the fact that it simply won’t happen.

BUT that hasn’t stopped me trying to get as much done as I can before the year ends, and I still have a week.

So for the last few days I’ve been working very hard to get as much done as I can, and I’m pleased to say I’ve painted all my Grey Knights, a Dark Angel, my Scrunts and some of Kev White’s excellent Hassel free Miniatures, and I will keep pushing to get as much done as I can before the time runs out.

So excuse the massive image dump, but I’ve been painting flat-out to get as much done as possible.

If you have any questions about any of the models please feel free to ask.

Enjoy