Just recently went to a wargaming market for the first time, where sellers were peddling all kinds of goods. Mostly it was second hand 40K stuff as well as lots of historical miniatures. But there were some other interesting things as well.

After somehow resisting the urge to buy a 40K Stormlord for £30 (I really wanted it, but have not really used my other 2 super heavy tanks yet), I only came away with some new MDF bridges.

It's not taken long to get these pieces finished, but they needed some modifications to make them usable. Firstly, I noticed the side panels protruded beneath the lower surface of the bridges. I guessed these panels could potentially dig in to my polystyrene hills and damage them. It was also very evident that the bridges were not very strong.

So to fix both issues, I added support and thickness to the underside of the bridges, using coffee stirrers and thick card.

After that, it was an easy task to add some paint and textures.

I've managed a few other little things these last couple of weeks, after finally varnishing my last lot of completed terrain, and starting the work needed to finish my Eldar MDF terrain. The power generators are going to need the most work. I really didn't like the look of the gaps in the wooden crystals, so I've started building up some filler, so that I can try and sand them down and make them more crystal-ish. Thinking about it now, there's probably 101 better ways of doing this. But whatever.

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I've not painted any miniatures since way back in June some time. As I assumed, the hot weather forced me away, and I have not yet found the motivation to go back now the weather is cooler again.

So much for making this a huge painting year.

Still, I'm looking to get back into it now, and have varnished the Epic Orks that needed it.

In addition, I'd not lined up all my 40K Imperial Guard for many years. So have done that as well.

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It's been a long time coming, but we finally managed to have a little refresher battle of our new Epic rules recently.

In this one, Gareth dipped his toes into the game for the first time, and took control of the Orks against my Chaos.

It was a short, close and bloody battle which ended with Gareth picking up the win. Even though I had more units at the end, I just didn't have enough left to trouble the two Stompas.

What an absolute ballache I've had trying to put together all the rest of my TTCombat MDF terrain from last year.

As I stated a while back on this blog, the Eldar pieces simply hadn't been cut out properly by the laser. So it took forever to work my way through all those tiny little pieces and trim them out with a blade.

Nevertheless, I got the stargates assembled, but I had an issue with the barricades that came with them. I didn't like how the laser etching was only on one side. So I glued two of them back to back and trimmed down the supports to allow this.

However, when I got to the end of this process, I still had two barricades left that I couldn't use, as one of the barricades was missing its two supports. Sure, I broke one of the other supports while I was trimming them down to glue the others together, so probably couldn't have made the last double-sided barricade anyway. But that's not the point. It became very apparent that someone at TTCombat can't count, when I assembled the generators, and found there were three little wooden "pins" that were also missing. I had to glue in some spare bits of wood, then trim them down when they were fully secured in place.

But the worst was yet to come, when I started to assemble Compund Chakwas. Now this kit was from their 10mm range, but I thought it could be used as some kind of silo station in both 6mm and 28mm. That's the entire reason I bought it.

So imagine how hard I sighed when I opened the packaging to find completely the wrong kit inside, even though Compund Chakwas was clearly on the label.

I'm guessing I bought it far too long ago to return it, so I decided to just go ahead and make whatever it was and hope it was usable. It turned out to be a kit called Compound Drack. I wasn't too unhappy with this, as it reminds me of the Hadley's Hope colony from Aliens. And though it's a little big for 6mm games, it will probably just about still work. There's no way I can use it in 28mm games though, that's for sure. Unless it's a base for Snotlings or something.

I haven't fully glued it all together yet, as I may incorporate it into a large 6mm android factory I've been thinking of making for ages.

But to continue the trend, there's also a piece missing from this kit as well, as one of the doors is not there. I guess I'll just have to make my own. Not the hardest thing to do, but still a pain.

Let's just say I won't be using TTCombat for this stuff ever again.

Finally managed to get a few terrain things finished and ready for the tabletop. Up first, the He-Man cave took way longer to sort out than it should, as I wasn't sure how to finish it off. In the end, I just thought "screw it" and threw on lots of different coloured flocks and grasses. Meh. It looks kinda weird to me, but whatever. I can handle it.

I'm happier with the two different kinds of ruins, especially how the different colours on the old Epic 40,000 ruins seem to make them look more interesting. Maybe I should have painted my bodged-together ruins different colours as well, but I did those first, so whatever.

So this is pretty much all the terrain I've been working on finished and ready to go. There's the Eldar MDF things to finish off, but I'm not in a rush to deal with that headache right now. The old Epic Space Marine buildings still require me to get a 3D printer, as well as learn how to digitally sculpt new building parts, so those will not be done any time soon either.

The only other terrain I've started, or more specifically, re-started, are my old "hilly rock" things. The rock sections of these looked really simple and not very rock-like at all. Some of them had also taken hits and damage, so they really needed some TLC.

So I've completely re-textured and base coated all of the rock sections. All they need now is for me to get the drybrush and washes on them to finish them off.

Just finished painting another clan for my Epic Ork army. This time it's the flashiest and shootiest of all da Orks, the Bad Moons.

They are nowhere near as good as I would have hoped, even though I've painted them quite adequately by my own standards. This is because many, many years ago, I ruined most of the models by spraying them with a crappy fluorescent yellow spray paint, and realised too late that the spray had filled in a lot of detail on the models.

Subsequent attempts to strip the models were slow and laborious, and did little to remove much of the paint. And without wanting to wreck the plastic models by risking any harsher chemicals, I sighed and left them as they were.

You can't really tell on these low quality pictures, but if you look close at the infantry, it looks like they are slightly melted almost, as so much of the detail is obscured.

But I guess at a glance they are ok, and as they are yellow, it means I am done with one of the more frustrating and difficult blocks of models that I needed to paint.

So, time to focus on something else...