Orko

New year, new project, as Orko is the inaugural mini in what I hope to build as a Masters of the Universe (MotU) Project.

Before continuing I just wanted to apologise to other bloggers for not commenting on your posts in the past couple of months as I have been in something of a hobby slump on the painting side of things.

So a new project eh? Simply put - yes! MotU is one of my grail IPs along with DC Comics, Marvel Comics, G.I. Joe and Star Wars. I see FFG are doing an excellent looking game with Star Wars Legion, but I don't have the appetite for mass-battle painting, so I am passing on that, but recently I have started to look at options for MotU and when more have materialised, a plan was hatched!

This mini is a Halfling Wizard from the excellent Heresy Miniatures. Although not an exact likeness of Orko from the 80's MotU cartoons (and soon after made into an action figure when he became a popular character), he was close enough for my needs. Like most characters made into action figures, Orko's look has evolved over the years, and so I took some hints from a few different versions in painting him. Strangely enough, I probably like the character more than I did as a youngster when he lacked the cool factor of He-Man, Man-At-Arms, Teela et al.

I bought the mini years ago and he sat in the minis pile for far too long. When I finally tackled him, Orko was actually painted quickly by my standards, in a couple of sittings yesterday afternoon. The only change I made to the mini was to snip away the long hair it had at its back. Unfortunately the paint-on varnish came out a bit shiny but I can live with that (weather too poor to use my usual Purity Seal).

I have a few other minis on order to represent other classic MotU characters, and I have already started gaming plans, which has involved writing a game and I think I will find a use for that dungeon terrain I showed in a post a couple of months ago (which could be tunnels beneath Castle Grayskull, Snake Mountain or Castle Eternia).

Quarter 4 Painting & Year End Hobby Review 2017

Quarter 4

Another hobby year comes to an end, and to be honest it has felt like a bit of a mixed twelve months personally, so I am hoping to use January 2018 as a fresh start.

Outside of my own hobbying, it has been great to see what other bloggers have done over the year, especially in the annual Zomtober outputs - well done to everyone.

This year I managed to paint 62 minis across 10 ranges/projects, a bit of a drop against 2016's 67 minis painted. The beginning of the year saw Knight Models drop its Marvel license (or be dropped by Marvel - speculation varies as to which of those is the case), curtailing my SMG and MUMG projects. After a slow start to the year things picked up, but I had no motivation to paint in December which felt like a missed opportunity, but I really can only face painting when I do feel sufficiently motivated.

I only managed to play 13 games, mainly because I am no longer playing or painting BMG, which meant my usual four or five tournaments attended in a year was only one in 2017.

Quarter 4

I have added to my terrain this year, although a lot of it hasn't been blogged; I have built more 4Ground stuff including Valian's Stables which my thoughtful wife got me for Christmas and which was tackled over a few sessions. A post of that will follow soon-ish.

In February I left Pulp Monsters after a few years of partnership and working to develop the game and its characters. There were a few reasons which lay behind this decision, but it was the right one for me and I wish the Maciej and the Pulp City game and range well. I also started serious work on developing my own Kitbash Games products which I hope to release as low-cost books via Wargames Vault in time - this is taking longer than planned, but I have gotten to a stage where I need to teach myself some new skills to progress. On the industry side of things there have been a couple of set-backs, mainly due to people not doing what they had committed to. On the plus side, I have started work on an editing polish for supplementary material for an existing game which is an interesting job and should be finished in January (at least on my part).

My painting in 2017
I once again set a high-end target of 60 minis for the year and again thankfully exceeded that. I think I'll be setting the same target for 2018, and will be adding in another new project (since my Knight Models projects are on hiatus for now), which will be in a new scale for me -1/35!

Quarter 1: 7 minis
SMG (Spider-man Miniatures Game): 5 minis
Pulp City: 2 minis

Quarter 2: 22 minis 
BMG: 11 minis
GI Joe: 5 minis
SDZA: 3 minis
Other Supers: 2 minis
SMG: 1 mini

Quarter 3: 14 minis 
G.I. Joe: 13 minis
Tooth & Sword: 1 mini

Quarter 4: 19 minis 
Chibi Fantasy: 7 minis
Tooth & Sword: 5 minis
Zombies: 4 minis
28mm Fantasy: 3 minis