It's taken a staggering amount of time, but finally my epic Eldar army is stripped, re-assembled, and ready for some paint. This has been without doubt one of the most time consuming and frustrating projects I've ever had in wargaming. There was so damn much paint on the large army I bought, that I don't think the previous owner even used a brush. I think they used their fingers.
Still, at least I was able to get all the paint off that army, eventually. The smaller army I bought, though only undercoated, was undercoated in a paint that I have been completely unable to remove. So I have no idea what kind of weird paint it is. It didn't all come off even after several dunks in the stripping pot. I could have spent hours with a small pin or knife and tried to scrape all the small details clear, but I've already spent way too long on this, so I'll make do without.

I just never want to have to strip any models ever again, and I'm so glad it's over.

Now I just need to wait for this stupid pandemic to be over so I can go and look for some new undercoat for the little pointy-ears.

A little while back, I decided to get all of my Epic miniatures out at the same time to see how much I actually own. It already looks quite eye-opening to me, to see all the painting work I still have left to do. But this picture was taken before I had fully prepped my Eldar, and before my recent efforts to get even more of my old spare models battle ready. The means the image does not contain a further box of Eldar, or the new Ork clan I've just made.
Sheesh.

Speaking of the Ork clan, here they are: Gwapstik's Boyz. They are based on my small 40K collection, so are a traditional Ork mob like the Snakebites, who also have access to Imperial vehicles like the Blood Axes. This is because they sometimes team up with other armies to attack Warboss Gwapstik's nemesis: Warlord Smashgrot, who is the ruler of my entire Epic Ork army. As the name would suggest, Smashgrot likes killing Gretchin, so all my Epic scale Grots hang out with Warboss Gwapstik.

I've also boosted the Orks even further, with some special characters from the old Epic 40,000 box set, as well as some battlewagons and pulsa rokkits for the Bad Moonz.
Counting my spare Chaos models that I didn't use a couple of years back, I realised I could put together another squad of Chaos Marines. I had so many heavy weapons that I've put two on each base, and will use them as Havocs.

But now all that assembling is done, it's time I got back to the painting, picking up from where I left off last time with the Evil Sunz.

It's been a slow, strange few months, during which I should have been rattling out achievements to document here. However, I have found myself completely unable to play computer games because of some bad RSI in my mouse-clicking fingers. And the hot weather, as it does every year, really put a dampener on my painting.

And yet, there has been a bit of movement in the tabletop gaming arena, especially these last couple of weeks.

Though I'm supposed to be painting my 6mm Tyranids, I instead got the urge out of nowhere to paint my 40K Imperial Guard characters. I rattled the officers off in short order, but my motivation ceased when I got to the Commissars.
That has pretty much been my only 40K involvement for the past 6 months, other than my decision to correct some big fuck ups with some green stuff that I made nearly 11 years ago now. I had never been happy with my hair attempt on either model, so I tore that crap off, and will now have to put them both in the stripping pot so I can re-paint them at a later date.

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I have continued to feel the urge to get my Epic armies to the tabletop again, but I'm still struggling to fully work on a new ruleset.
I have instead been doing some work on preparing the armies. I've freshly basecoated all of my Evil Sunz, as well as re-basing a lot of Orks and Imperial Guard. As I had never painted one before, I decided to paint the Mega Gargant first, which was an interesting challenge, though I've also done the Fighter-Bommerz. I'll next be moving on to the rest of the red ladz, but first I figured I should finish the Trygons that had been sitting half-painted since some time back in March.

The main reason that I'm really feeling Epic right now is that I got tempted to pick up some Eldar again. I used to have an Eldar army back in the 90s, but Scoob ended up with it at some point. I can't remember how or why, but I've always regretted getting rid of it.

But now, I'm looking to rebuild my pointy-ears, and I've started with winning two armies from ebay. Some of those old models are in a pretty bad way, and they're going to need some serious TLC to get them up to speed.

However, with some cheating, I think I can currently make the following army:
3 Titans, 3 Tempests, 4 Wave Serpents, 6 War Walkers, 2 Prism Cannons, 2 Doomweavers, 3 Warlocks, 7 units of Guardians, 4 units of Jetbikes, 2 units of Vypers, 4 units of Tremor Cannons, 3 units of Lascannons, 5 units of Wraithlords, 2 units of Exarchs, 1 unit of Rangers, 1 unit of Dark Reapers, 1 unit of Swooping Hawks, 1 unit of Dire Avengers, 2 units of Fire Dragons, 2 units of Harlequins, 2 units of Striking Scorpions, 1 unit of Howling Banshees, and 1 unit of Wraithguard.

There are a few things I'd still like, such as the very important Avatar, but getting the forces I've already got table-ready will be a task all on its own. Oh well. Better get back on ebay...

<Old Stuff>

Since I changed the "feel" of my site last year, these next few pictures have not existed online. However, I want them out there as a method of shaming me into actually pulling my finger out.

These pictures show the state of all my wargaming armies, or at least, how they looked the last time I lined them all up for photos. Not a great deal has changed for most of them, which indicates just how much of a task I still have in front of me in order to get them all done.

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<Old Stuff>

Here are my 6mm Epic armies. It's one of my deepest gaming regrets that I have not really shown this game any love for the last decade. I mean, I used to really enjoy playing the old Epic Space Marine, and my later botched attempts at reviving it. Plus, I have so many models, including some Andrayada from Dark Realm Miniatures that I was working on making up my own rules for.

A lot of the models that I have painted for this game were done back in the 1990s, so are really crappy and in dire need of being updated. Therefore nothing is really up to my current standard other than the Khorne and Nurgle parts of my Chaos army, while hopefully the Tyranids will be done at some point sooner rather than later.

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<Old Stuff>

Here are my 40K armies. I'm further along at getting these painted compared to my Epic armies, but that's not really saying much. All of my Tyranids are done, and the vast majority of my Space Marines. I've just got to paint the other Marines that I added to the army a while back.

That only really leaves 3 armies, though I only count them as 2. All the way back from when I first started to collect them, it has always been my intent for the Eldar and Tau to be one allied army. Of course, as is typical of me, I didn't play anything of 6th or 7th editions, when these two were actually allowed to ally together and were supposed to be quite powerful. But hey, I don't care. If I do get round to using them in 8th I'll probably still throw them together, even if it means losing a lot of their special rules.

I do also have a small number of Orks and Sisters Of Battle, but they're nowhere near full armies, and I don't intend on making them so. Got enough to get through already...

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<Old Stuff>

Of my 40K armies that are not yet fully painted, only a few models are even slightly worthy of having their picture taken. And here they are:

After months of waiting, time off work and some good weather finally allowed me to go crazy with the varnish and get all my big bugs tabletop ready at last. Now, the thing is, getting them all out of and back into their cases was an absolute pain in the ass because of all their spiky bits. I don't think I'm going to like doing that very often when we game, especially as the Nidz are a bit weak rules-wise right now.

Maybe I need to paint up my Guard or Tau real quick...

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Also got around to doing something I thought of a while back, which was to re-paint an old fish tank decoration Scoob and I bought years ago. I was never particularly happy with the quick and ready paint job I gave it first time around, but I'm much happier now.