woensdag 14 december 2011

40K: My Son's (age 7) Dark Eldar and my Daughter's (age 4) Necrons

My children were always very interested in dad's hobby's. They both started painting miniatures at the age of about 2. On that age they just slammed paint on the miniatures (marines and empire), regardless of colour and drying times.

My Son
A couple of months ago my son (then 6 years old) asked if he could start a real army...and while on holiday, exploring an unfamiliar city, we came across a hobby store. In holiday-mood, the kids could pick a toy for the rainy days. My son stopped at the Games-Workshop shelf and asked "Can I have one of these ?". "Sure, but only one small box." was my answer. So he was, with dad's help, exploring the different army's.
I suggested Space Marines and Imperial guard to him (as dad already has a nice collection of the emperor's finest), but he said "Dad, which of these are enemies of your armies ?". I was shocked, why not the righteous path of the Imperium like his dad ? Well, shocked as I was I pointed out the enemies of the imperium...and he chose the Dark Eldar, because they looked the vilest of all.
My own son.....a traitor.....(sigh)

Well, two weeks ago he finished his first Dark Eldar miniature:



Last month we started painting. Then my daughter asked if she could paint some of his miniatures, but he said no, because he wanted to paint his whole army. Having witnessed the whole ordeal with his army, she naturally asked if she could have an army of her own. Hoping for someone following the footsteps of the Imperial creed, daddy said "Yes, ofcourse". 
Next we searched the website of GW so she could choose an army. Browsing the armies, she chose Necrons, because they were robots and had scorpion-like ships in the arsenal. Maybe I could turn her to the good-side if we would go to the local GW-store, so she could see some miniatures in real. Well, that wasn't the brightest idea of daddy either. She managed to select the three  most expensive boxes of the Necrons altough we agreed she would only get one box of infantry. She held on to her choice of Necrons and I managed to reduce the amount of boxes to two. The only requirement she had was that these Necrons could be coloured purple and/or pink.....Well, here is her first finished model.

Maybe you would think that dad had a great hand in these miniatures, but that wasn't entirely the case.

With my son, the assembly and painting went as followed;
- Son chose figure and weapons.
- Dad checked the codex for legality and removed the mold-lines
- Son glues the mini together, only the difficult arms with weapons are done by dad.
- Dad does the cleaning and undercoat (black).
- Son drybrushes two layers of green and the basic skintone, basic hair, basic  metallic parts of the weapons and the base for the blue parts (skull-white)
- Dad does the washes for the skin, metallics and the blue parts (transparant blue) and does some retouching and lining in the face.
- Son does the sand and the grass.

With my daughter, the assembly and painting went as followed.
- Dad checked codex and removed mold-lines
- Daughter glues the body-parts, dad the head and arms.
- Dad does the cleaning and undercoat (black), and mixes the metallic purple and metallic pink.
- Daughter does the drybrushing of purple and pink and the metallic part on the gun.
- Dad does the eyes and weapon (white and transparant green) and the wash on the metallic part of the gun.
- Daughter does the sand and grass.


Well, although they are both enemies of their father, daddy is quite proud of what they have achieved with these miniatures.
The only problem now is the rules, maybe the standard 40K rules are a bit too complex for them to have a fun game.......

Any great ideas are more then welcome.


dinsdag 13 december 2011

FOW: Panzer Lehr, the inventory with good and bad news

Last sunday at Ronfest, someone asked me how many Germans I still had to complete. Since I have the units I always wanted (and some more), I tought it would be a good idea to make a work list with the miniatures I minimal would have to make for my Panzer Lehr and 101 SS.

After a couple of hours work I completed the minimumlist with the book at hand. In this list only the miniatures which I have and belong to the Panzer Lehr / 101 SS are mentioned and listed.


The good news:
a) I have completed my panzer Lehr list many times, and always wanted to add some more. But now I am satisfied with the list. Ofcourse I still have some small wishes some extra's, but these are overviewable now.
b) At the local club, there is a FOW fanatic organizing FOW games and I'm quite confident he will keep it alive, which hopefully will keep my attention to it alive as well.
c) I have seriously started with building of the army.

The bad news:
Averaging 2 days to complete 1 vehicle or stand (1 day for assembly and 1 day for painting when working in batches) with 380 vehicles and stands to go, I'll need 760 days to complete this army.....
I am hoping to come up with some genius way to speed that up, because I hoped to finish it in one year.

Any good ideas are welcome.


vrijdag 9 december 2011

FOW: Aufklarungs Kompanie, first assembly

Well, I have finally been busy again with FOW.
Early this year I cleared out my hobby-zone and the loft to put all my hobby stuff in the basement (I am renovating my house....for about 3 years now), so I haven't done much with my hobbies.
A couple of weeks ago I played a little game of FOW, which got my interest back in the miniatures.
So, after a few days of sorting the hobby stuff, I found most of my FOW stuff and started assembling.

Well, here are the first assembled aufklarungs SdKfz250's. I am quite proud of these little buggers.