Hobby: All the Things, Part 2

I have been very mercurial in my hobbying the last few months, letting my ambitions run wild and doing a little of everything. Unfortunately, that's led to things spiraling out of control. It's been a few years, but I once again have just a ridiculous amount of things in process, and needed to spend a few days cleaning and organizing and packing and planning instead of getting much actual hobbying in, since my little home office space had no desk space, no shelf space and over a dozen bits boxes and project boxes scattered around the floor. Hopefully the cleaning efforts and this post helps me prioritize a bit, and some of these units will be done soon!

Kingdoms of Men Chariots

I had actually gotten through most of a WIP post last week for them. These are actually pretty far along. I need two more drivers with spears, and then prior to officially calling them done, I wanted to sit down and figure out how I could arrange the 6ish bowmen across the models to make things modular, in order to run stuff with and without bows for testing... and in trying to do so, I came to the realization that all that is a lot of work and I just don't care to do it.

WIP Chariots, very nearly there.

The bow upgrade has a minimal points investment, and their output on the table is correspondingly meager. I'll spread the bow models around the units and call it good enough. In terms of wysiwyg, hobbying too many bows and occasionally not taking the upgrade seems better than not hobbying them and then saying "ah, yes, surprise, but this unit also has a shooting attack." Rules change (I believe they originally had bows by default) and I don't really care if that situation happens to me, especially on a unit like this with such little output, but I am trying to be respectful to my opponents since I am running so many lists and different units and being wysiwyg helps. 

Thankfully, I got the last two drivers I absolutely needed primed recently. Since these were WIP but already seeing play on the table, everything was secured with PVA glue, which is still holding. I'll hopefully get the last two drivers painted up soon and these finished off!

Undead Ghouls

I knew I wanted to make a bigger pivot towards the Undead, and have been trying to bulk out the army's less-flashy options the last few months, with stuff like the multi-system Undead and such. I had some spare "muddy" bases from a wrong turn in that project, and wanted to try out mass Ghouls, so picked up some bundles on ebay.

A bunch of Ghouls to reinforce my two completed troops.

The models were previously assembled, and with 30+ minis attached to bases, this endeavor has been a little daunting, as I keep discovering bad clips and mold lines that I've missed on previous passes, which really messes with the quicker paint job that I was trying to give these. You really need to clean  the mold lines of your minis if you want to lean on washes or contrast / speed paints. I've chipped away at these, but these still need a lot of work.

Undead Smashy Skeletons

As part of the Undead pivot, I picked up some boxes of Oathmark Skeleton Warriors back in the early summer, and then won another box from Dragonfall, for a crazy 90 skeleton minis total. The intent was to hobby up some Skeletons with two-handers, for reasons that I'll get into on their Hobby Update post.

Oathmark Skeletons, plus bits.

I have a few units ready, but the conversions and weapon swaps are taking a lot time, and it'll be a lot of effort to get the others ready for the table. Thankfully, I finished up all the grip conversions work last week, so it's just weapon swaps on the remaining units, plus priming and painting. I think I'll need to split these into a first and second batch though, just in case the weather turns and really gets the better of me. Being better organized now though, we should have the first batch ready very soon.

Forces of the Abyss Nagarri & Abyssal Berserkers

Going into November here, I picked up two boxes of the new Abyssal Ambush kit, and I think this is what officially broke me with regards to hobbying. Very little of the Abyssal refresh really excited me, but I did want to try the new, shiny units.

Very chonky Nagarri with a lot of dumb-looking glaives.

I decided to build up two regiments of Nagarri and at least one horde of the Berserkers (who look to have a keyword / naming issue... sheesh), and so I started snipping and assembling about half the minis, but then just got overwhelmed. I don’t really like the weapon options on either kit, and felt like I should be doing some conversion work, which was going to take space and effort and planning. 

Great minis, abysmal weapons.

Running something brand new and sharing it in a battle report really appealed to me, and the new formation looks fun, but both parts of the kit is just too much work to tackle without wrapping other things up first.

Forces of the Abyss Lower Abyssals and Abyssal Ghouls

I hobbied up a neat Abyssal Ghoul regiment over the summer, and had plans to do up a second regiment. I had a lot of Ghoul torsos, but not legs, so the plan was to sit down and try a lot of green stuff and armature sculpting over the winter. I’m not quite sure about that plan now. 

Ghouls, per the label. I need like, 8 sets of legs (plus heads)

The new Abyssal refresh combined the Ghouls and Lower Abyssals, removing the former unit entirely and dropping the latter to Melee 5+. I had come to appreciate my two-handers, so am a little gutted. The shielded, more tar-pitty version of the unit might be the better pick on the table now, since it’s just around to hold ground, but it’s a lot of minis to work on at once.

24ish loose Lower Abyssals.

I had actually started on the shielded unit over the summer, and the got a good pink base coat, but motivation left me the closer we got to the refresh, as I had other things I wanted to hobby up and run sooner. I’ve got a good start on these, but they are looking like a winter project now. 

Varangur Draugr

I haven't played the Varangur much this year. It's a neat army, but other things kept taking priority. I scrapped all my old lists, and got in a pair of games recently, but was struggling with what to run with them next, as the army is just so darn elite.

New sprues to recreate the previous kit bashes.

I have three regiments of Draugr, hobbied up back in January 2023. The regiments are great units, but I decided I need at least one more regiment, so that I could get two cheap hordes for the numerous unlocks, which should hopefully let me run some more-interesting and less-elite builds to help me find  my footing with the army again. 

Along with the Abyssal Ambush boxes, I think this new project broke me as I really want to do it, but just don't have the capacity for all the conversion work needed without finishing up some other stuff first and creating the space to spread out all these bits. 

Herd Flaxhoof & Great Chieftain with Horn of the Great Migration

I ran the Herd a lot this year, and have just a few more “weird” lists to explore and triple down on an idea before I put them into a more normal rotation. A few of those weird lists are Centaur-focused, so I wanted to do up a Flaxhoof character for the full experience.

I had concepts of a plan for conversions for both a Flaxhoof mini and a Great Chieftain with the Horn by sawing a Gor body in half, but the conversion bits have been sitting in a little project box for months and months.

The Chieftain might need to wait while I figure out if I want to hobby up wings for him or not (the Herd is not popular, but the older go-to was taking Wings of Honeymaze with the horn to provide a mobile bobble of both Inspiring and Dread), but I think I can get Flaxhoof ready soon. We'll see.

Herd Lycans

The Lycans were, almost to a model, all casualties of metal minis and a flipped storage box over the summer in the Great Stampede of 2024. Most were knocked off of their respective unit bases, and many have broken bits here and there. The unit has great speed, but with just CS1, will struggle to be an effective hammer for the Herd, and so I have struggled to find the motivation to get them rebased.

Still broken. The old Brutox / Beast of Nature is here too.

As long as I needed to redo most of the bases, I want to reorganize the units to be able to run a second regiment. Thankfully, the basing work doesn’t depend on the weather, nothing needs to be primed, and the repair work should all be easy work to do. This seems like a winter project.

…So that’s the gist of all the big things I had spread around my little room. Instead of being spread across shelves and desks, everything now has its own little project box. We'll try to knock a few of these out in the coming weeks, but I should have a good amount of stuff to keep my busy for a while!