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...

I finally gave up trying to fully strip the Ork Battle Fortresses, and got them as good as I could. However, there was a problem when I came to re-assemble the Gibletgrindas. I never really caught on when I first glued them together back in the 90s, that the top tower doesn't fit anywhere near correctly into the base. I ended up taking them to work to use a little grinder to take some bits off, and have used to milliput to fill in the gaps.

And now they're good.

Put an order in recently for some more paint, and I've spread my wings a little in order to try some other manufacturers. I still got some GW base paints in order to mix them in with some old paints I have that are very thin and watery. They've worked for the most part, so that's pretty good.

However, as two of my current gold-ish colours are also very thin and near useless, and my old silver dried up, I bought some P3 metallics. Very disappointed is all I can say. The silver is just about usable, but the gold is just as thin and weak as my others. Shouldn't have bothered. The red however is very good, but that is also a base paint so should have heavy pigment. Really like the Vallejo paint so far, but ordering over the internet has left me with a dark green colour that I didn't really want. I was hoping it would be more of a military green, but whatever. I can deal.

I've also picked up plenty of paint tubes for the imminent terrain slopping and drybrushing fest that I'm going to have. Got plenty of terrainy things just sitting there waiting for it.

As I've been doing a lot of painting recently, I've been trying to use a wet palette for the 2nd time. When I tried a few years ago, I though it was a waste of time and quickly dismissed it. When I came back to it and looked into it more, I think it was because the paper I bought wasn't really proper wet palette paper. So instead, after having a bit of a light bulb moment when getting very messy eating some Greggs pizza, I thought I'd try to use a Greggs food bag. And holy shit it works a treat. I've been using this for most of my recent Ork and Tyranid efforts. I just cut out little squares as and when I need them.

Just gotta be sure to use clean bags though. Don't think the models would appreciate being slathered in Greggs pizza grease.

And in good news, it's been a long time coming, but I've finally finished painting another army in the form of my Epic Tyranids. Took a while to flock their bases, as I think the PVA glue I've got is shite, so I had to do them twice. But they're all done and varnished and ready for action.

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For some weird reason I thought it was two winters ago when I started my big push to finish my Epic Tyranids. But as I look back I see it was actually three, just after I finished my 40K Nidz. What the hell? Has it taken me more than two whole years to paint probably my smallest Epic scale army (not counting the unofficial Androids?).

I seriously doubt I'm going to be anywhere near my 4 army target. I just paint too slow, and don't have enough time. Still, I've been pushing pretty strong these last few months, and will continue to.

So at last, a full Epic army is complete, and like their 40K counterparts before them, it is the Nidz who take the honour.

At least the other armies shouldn't be as hard to paint as this one.

Well, maybe the Orks.

And Chaos.

And probably Guard.

Sigh.

Not wanting to let the Tyranids have all the fun, I've also been doing a lot of work on my 6mm Ork collection. The Evil Sunz and Bad Moonz are part way through, but I've fully finished my own clan, Gwapstik's Boyz. These ladz will be waiting to put the boot in on the Nidz or any other enemy that crosses their path in the future.

Been having some fun (not) recently trying to put together all of those MDF terrain pieces I bought a few months ago.

The only one I've managed to get anywhere near completion is the Space Elf Soulward, and even that has seen me making some heavy modifications.

With the way it's supposed to be assembled, there are these two clips that hold the pieces of the wood apart and leave huge gaps down between them. I figured this would be an arse to paint, even if I tried to paint it before I assembled it.

So to get around this, I glued all the wood "panels" pretty much flush with one another, then used filler to cover up the much smaller gaps.

It's going to take some tricks and fiddles when I paint and weather it to cover up some dodgy bits, but overall it will be much easier.

The other MDF terrain pieces have completely stalled, as it seems the laser didn't really cut them out very well. You can see on the image here on one side how good the cut is, but on the other the laser has barely broke the surface.
It means I've been having to go along with a stanley blade and try and cut everything out rather than try to punch them out and damage them. Pissing annoying.