So, this is the first blog of 2016. I hope you're all well-rested and recovered after the festivities and that Santa/your significant other brought you all the hobby bits you asked for.
This year my hobby haul as a bit light, consisting only of one box of the High Elf Mage/Archmage kit. In fact, I wouldn't have got that except that my five year old daughter told my wife that she wanted to get me some models and that was the cheapest kit on my Christmas list. The missus was a bit annoyed as that kit was over the £10 budget we'd set for presents to us from our daughter, although she didn't do herself any favours by ordering it from GW's website when she couldn't find it in the local independent store, rather than asking me to suggest alternative places to buy stuff from.
At least I actually got stuff I asked for this year and it was the right stuff. Last year was a bit of a farce when the missus managed to order the Italian version of a Blu-ray I wanted. There was I, trying to be helpful by sending her a link to a list I'd set up Google Sheets that listed what I was after, as well as putting a link to the product page on the appropriate website, and she just read what the item was in the first column, typed a search into Amazon and ended up picking the wrong thing. Thankfully this year I was spared the chore of having to arrange replacement items as she took my advice to use the links I'd provided in the list document. In case you're wondering, my other Christmas goodies this year were the 5th volume of the Walking Dead hardback collections, the complete series of Psychoville on Blu-ray, a tub of Masters Old Brush Soap (which I can't buy locally now as far as I'm aware since the big toys and craft store in town closed down a few years ago) and a 10 stop neutral density filter for my camera (which I'm unlikely to get to use until our holiday in July).
I've managed to get a little bit of hobby done since the last blog. I managed to do the Dragon Prince horses in Dheneb Stone that I'd planned to, as well as doing some cleaning up of some more Dragon Prince models I've bought. I've decided now to aim for 30 in my collection - originally I was only going to do 24 but then decided to round it up to 30 and so I bought a box from the local store when I was down for club night (as subs are £2 or a item purchase of £2.50 or more I justified the purchase on the grounds that it was an extra £2 saving on something I was planning to buy anyway) as well as buying some bits from a bits site sale. Worryingly, last night when I was trying to sort out some models to take to work for lunchtime painting, I found a load more Dragon Prince bits in the box I'd put my assmebled Shadow Warriors and Sisters of Avelorn in, so now I think I may have too many bits. (Looking at the bright side, that might mean bits spare for conversions/kit bashes.)
As I'm still aiming to try and have a bit of every unit that was in the 8th edition army book, I've finally come to a decision as to what I want to do about Silver Helms. I'm planning to heavily kit-bash them using the horses from the Dark Riders/Doomfire Warlocks kit and then whatever other bits of bodies, lances etc that I can find that will work. To that effect I've so far bought five horses from a bits site and a new box of Warlocks from someone selling one off cheap online to give me 10 horses so far. Not sure how many I want overall, I'll possibly end up going to 30 as with the Drgaon Princes depending on how easily I can come by the Dark Rider horses. I'd hoped the capes from the Dark Riders could be easily adapted to the spare Shadow Warrior bodies I've got left over from making my Sisters of Avelorn but on examining the kit I see that the cape actually comes with part of a torso. It might be possible to use them still, I'm just not sure if it might be a bit too much work considering the amount of stuff I've got to build.
All that said, at the moment I'm trying to have a real crack down on my spending as I had to buy a new TV just before Christmas and in general I'm fed up of being a bit skint (although that's mainly thanks to having to pay out for things for the house). I really do need to get round to selling off my High Elf metal models to free up cash for paying for any bits I need but I've got to sort out some replacement standard bearers for my Core infantry before I can really consider doing that. This is something that's sort of been on the back burner for a couple of years that I should probably try and sort out this year, assuming I can find the time.
I also need to try and have another sort through the house to try and get all my Warhammer stuff into as few places as possible. I do actually have the storage boxes I need to house my army but at the moment one of them has most of my metal models in, another has a load of family photo albums in that I'm trying to get scanned in (one of my other projects I don't have enough time for), one has the plastic models of my army that I'm not currently using, and the fourth is... somewhere. As well as that, I should probably also have a long think about what other bits of the wife's Dark Elves that are left that I'll ever make use of and sell off what I'm not going to use. When I started thinking about selling off her metal stuff for her, the Khaine End Times book was either out or enough was known about the rules that I was intending to hold on to the Dark Elf plastics to use as allies to my High Elves in a Host of the Aestyrion/Phoenix King/Eternity King list. Now, I'm not sure I'm really likely to ever use a lot of what she's got.
Anyway, that's all for now folks.
