Painting Challenge doldrums and Elder Sign.

For those who have been keeping an eye on the myriad of activity over at the Analogue Hobbies painting challenge, you may have noticed I am languishing near the bottom of the pack (as I anticipated), without a submission to my name, as yet...

I am steadily plodding away, and have got the 36 goblins from the The Hobbit starter set, about 75% done. I have also got the Goblin King, Scribe and the two goblin captains assembled and base painted.

 And the throne... that was quite a mission as the back of the sculpt is hollow and undetailed which I didn't like, so had to pack it with foam and filler then clad it in bark chip to texture it as rock. No small task...

 But its progressing steadily...

And Sunday night saw the Bowman family head back to the cinema to see the movie again, just to top up the motivation ;-) . I have to say, we saw the 3D version again , as that's all that was available locally at the time we could go, and as much as I love the movie, I think I prefer the 2D version, as there's less blurring, and a clearer image throughout.

The weather hasn't helped either, were finally getting some consistent summer days and its darn hard to stay inside and paint while the weather is glorious. But I did get a little hobby time in over the weekend, and enjoyed sitting out in the sun, under the patio table's umbrella, sipping a chilled beer, or three... while I sat and snipped, trimmed and assembled my 15mm PSC half-tracks (again!) this time though for the command vehicle upgrades, using the PSC upgrade kit.

I made three half tracks with the addition of the  optional PaK36 AT gun mounted up front, instead of the forward firing MG.

This leaves two more to do and I have a choice of stummels, 8cm mortars or flame throwers... I can't decide which to pick! I could add the stummels or mortars to my existing 2 of each, bumping up the platoon size of each to 4 vehicles, or I could add the flame throwers for something a bit different.

Anyone with any experience of using half track flame throwers please shout up!

While I deliberated over that, I started making the 15mm PSC Tiger I kits I got, and got the first 'big cat' assembled. Three more to go...

I picked the 'Mid period' model as my Wehrmacht forces are themed Mid-War eastern front onwards, and I just don't like the look of the Late period's wheels... so I figured if I need to use these guys in Late-War, we'll they'll just have seen a lot of action and be darn experienced to boot! ;-)

Also, last night we had a spot of board-gaming, when mate Jon came round with his Elder Sign game by FantasyFlightGames.

Elder Sign is a Cthulhu-lite themed game, which is both card and dice played.

It is a co-opertative style game, where the players are working together to beat the game, and stop an Eldritch Horror being released into the world.

A lot of fun, which my 9rd old son also got to grips with very quickly and was rapt!

We played several games over the course of an evening, interspersed with a game of Munchkin too.

Great stuff. I do enjoy a good 'board-game' in the right company every now and then, time allowed,  and I can control the guilt at not picking up the paint brushes!