2014 An overview of the year...

Well where did 2014 go eh!!

Its been an eventful year with loads of cool stuff happening within the Anarchy of Anton,

So strap in and lets go....

Wiggle, Wiggle...

January,

Starts with a challenge from Gary over at Leicester All Scar's with the hobby, Normally I don't bother with a "to do" list as I'm terrible for flicking between systems and the shiny model effect.

The List!

I put 15 items/projects on the list and you'll see where I finished at the end of this lengthy post.

Paint wise it consisted of WWX

and Mantic Enforcers,

With the new plastic ones inbound for the deadzone 3rd wave, I'm really looking forward to these arriving and giving them a lick of paint.

February,

Continued with the deadzone theme and actually managed to get the terrain done,

I also had the brain wave of running a demo saga game so went about planning that...

March,

The start of "Operation Finish those Projects" which started with some 15mm grunts stuff I've had kicking around for ages!

I also had a pondering moment with regards to forums verses social media...

are-forums-going-way-of-dino

As I spend most of my days off out and about with the GC I stumbled across the perfect scatter terrain material...

Yep playground bark!

April,

Well as its salute, the traditional "ask Anton" was in full effect with the Russian painting machine going into full swing!

Nick, Phil, Lee, Coops and Jo had done an awesome job on the board and it looked stunning!!

We even got filmed by beasts of war!

What is more shocking is that I picked up my first new system of 2014 in the form of Jugular.

May,


Was mainly working on warmachine convergence,

I also managed to blastout most of a Bolt Italian army in a fairly short time,

a fairly quiet month for me!

June,

The Expo had arrived and we had a blast playing saga for two full days,

after the dust settled on that I increase the ranks of my orks ready for the pending codex release,

And finally a kickstarter turned up that I'd been looking forward to for a while,

All quiet on the Martian Front, this game has potential however the lack of communication from Alien Dungeon has been quite poor, My second wave has only just rocked up. Lee has had bugger all as the dastardly martians are not really seeing much action model wise.

July,

I started the month with a controversial subject being recasts from China,

30k-on-cheap

Banged out some Brotherhood that I grabbed at Expo,

These were lovely models to paint and have since become some of my favourite scifi models to play with as who would know that religious nutters with guns would appeal to me!


I rounded the month of with a trip over to warlord gamesday with Kris and Salma,

However Kris did forget the tickets so we had to turn around!! Bloody muppet!

August,

My first official gig as a Crusader for Prodos over at Portal gaming, the jungle terrain went down real well,

Overall cracking day and really enjoyed it, I need to get over to portal more often as I've only managed it three time this year,

then it all came crashing down as my rig died....

on positive note I managed to get down and dirty and focus on various odds and sods that I'd had for a while,

 

I also got some Urak Hai in a moment of madness!

September,

I was still without a rig so the blog posts slowed down and the future of the Anarchy was looking dodgy, However I continued the paint bits and bobs..

I made a effort on the WWX/deadmans hand board I'd been talking about for a while,

Myself and Lee with a few lucky chosen managed to get a game of Martian Front in and it plays fairly well,

October,

Derby was on us before we knew it and Dan took the helm for the game, and came up with a zombie saga game!!

And this bagged the demo team best participation game!

At this point in the I'd also picked up Valhalla, system number two!

During this month my second wave for deadzone had landed and much to my surprise the Asterians really appealed to me, not sure why but I really like them.

I then went into terrain mode!

And Myth finally arrived after god knows how long being delayed!!

November,

So after a few years of doing UK shows, we thought Europe was a good idea and decided to head over to Antwerp for a couple of days gaming!

The show itself was great, the tables looked cracking and the punters were really nice people, well worth a visit.

A week or so later I was playing Kings of war at the Loughborough Dice devils torney and ended up as the winner, much to my surprise!

I was also still in terrain mode and managed to finish off my WWX/Wild west table,

towards the end of the month I managed to get hold of some of my gamefunder relics early so that I could paint up a second faction and get accepted onto the Tor gaming Rangers demo team,

I'm now "working" for both Prodos and Tor gaming, so loads of demo events will be ran and hopefully get a few people into Warzone and Relics.

And Finally myself and Dan wandered over Mantic open day, hooked up with coops and picked up our copies of dreadball extreme,

December,

Still having an itch for terrain I did various bits and bobs at the start of the month,

Splashed some paint on some more warzone bits,

The guardians were lovely models to paint and if you had more choice with regards to poses these would look great as grey knights!!

I also blasted out my new dropzone army that I picked up at Derby earlier in the year, quite a quick paint scheme, I might add to it in the future, depends how much I'll actually play it,

Whilst I was pondering over what to do, I painted a zee team for dreadball and some convicts for extreme,

these have gone down really well within the community and have had some great feedback!

Finally towards the end of the month my second wave for all quiet on the martian front turned up and boy oh boy I was in for a surprise!!

I've not painted a model this big since Bob when I kicked off this blog a long time ago!!

Ironically after my post about forums and all that jazz earlier in the year I finally got round to making a face book page for the blog that I use for links for new posts as well as work in progress type shots or something that catches my fancy.

The Anarchy of Anton on Facebook

so if your on face book come give me some likes and spread the love!

So lets look at the scores on the doors....

The original Goals for 2014

Make some gaming boards:
4x4 Jungle board
4x4 old west/wild west exodus board

Finish off some projects:
Cybertronic for warzone
Enforcers for deadzone
Terrain for deadzone 
Enlightened & Outlaws for WWX
Zee dreadball team
Malifaux Gremlins
Plague reaper for 40K escalation
Orks for 40K (not finish but do enough for 2K)
Finish off the 5th Company including the drop pods
Orcnar for Relics

New systems & Projects that I've not kickstarted:
Judge Dredd
Muskets & Tomahawks
Italians for boltaction

So out of the 15 that I aimed to get done I rocked in with a 9 complete giving me a 60% success rate, which isn't too bad!

I didn't touch the Dark angels or the plague reaper and I'm so close to the orc's I can smell them, I just need to do a few odds and sods!

WWX didn't get much of a look in really as I didn't have the motivation to paint them up. Judge Dredd and Muskets and Tomahawks hasn't had any real interest so they can go on the "maybe" another time list.

This for me was a good way of staying on track and looking at what I'd like to get done for the year, The one thing I've learnt is not so many for next time and rather than multiple armies for the same system mix it up as I've not played much 40K at all I had no motivation to paint the models!

So onto the "pledge"

December

Bought - 20
Painted - 53
Difference +33

2014

Bought - 631
Painted - 972
Difference + 341

Compared to the previous years,

                    2010      2011       2012     2013    2014
Bought        469        1238       407        763     631
Painted        513        1245       563        859     972
Diff             +44        +7          +156      +96     +341

God knows how I've managed it but I've bought less than last year and painted loads more this year, mind you at least 150 of that was for the demo boards, but never the less its a huge amount of output!

It was another blazing summer in the UK so many a day was spent out with the GC which isn;t a bad thing!

Stats wise its been a good year with the average view for month being about 4,500ish so I'm quite happy with that as this started out as more of a motivation for myself to get things painted rather than a stat session!

The Future....

I didn't pick up half as many systems as I did last year so that's a good sign that maybe I'm being more picky with what I collect or back on kickstarter, I still managed a few but the ones that I backed I'm confident that these will rock up some time in 2015.

A bit more self control on the kickstarter front and I'll be sorted, one of the guys at the Leicester Phat Cats Ali ( alasdhairmm.blogspot.co.uk ) is trying to go cold turkey with not buying anything until March 2015!!

Now the chances of that actually happening for me is slim to none, but I think if I can reduce the amount of plastic crack that I pick up it'll help me focus on the stuff that will be rocking up in the new year, which should include AVP, War and empire, Recon and wolsung so I've a feeling that lo will be keeping me busy!

So a huge thanks to the regular readers and all the lovely people who leave comments,

Catch you in 2015!

Dreadball Extreme Convicts Team & Zee Team

About a month ago I wandered over to the Mantic open day and picked up my copy of dreadball Extreme,

In the usual Anton fashion, It wasn;t long before I was splashing some paint on the models,

the actual models themselves are a huge improvement compared to the original dreadball models from a couple of years ago,

Even though I got two packs of of the gribbly monsters, I decided only to paint one of them as I'm not sure if I'd use all of them.

I've based the convicts on the prison uniform from guardians of the Galaxy rather than the orange that Mantic have done, just for something different,

So whilst I was in the mood I blasted out the Zee's so I could cross it of the goal list for 2014 and give me an incentive to play some dreadball in the new year,

I filled the gap on the base between the model and it looks far better than the robot team I did a while back,

The pose that did make me smile was the wound markers for the convicts, simple but effective!

so there you go folks some lovely models ready to go, All I need to do is get some extreme time in.

Bolt action Italians "complete" Company B Dovunque 35 review

Well I thought I'd sorted the mighty Italians out but in the tradition that all gamers follow I ended up "just getting a few more bits"

I was looking at the options for the beraglieri unit and you can have two LMG's per squad, however warlord only do unit blisters with one in and they don;t operate a parts service so I had a ponder and picked up a few bits from the perry's quick head swap and they were done and dusted,

so I've two LMG teams and a couple of extra guys that I could use as spotters or FAO's

so the whole lot together, Now you'd think that I'd be done at that point but no I picked up tanks wars a while back and have finally got round to reading it so now I'm planning a second platoon of armour mix in some transport for the infantry and the like and we'll be good to go!

the only issue that I've had is finding 28mm Italian WW2 trucks as they are not the most popular range on the market and found a few odds and sods kicking around,

I ordered a dovunque 35 by company b miniatures from war games command post and thought I'd do a review of the kit as £26 for a model is a gamble when your not sure on the quality.

So this is how the kit comes,

A fair few metal bits, 

 and a resin one piece body, 

As the kits comes with no instructions a quick gander on the net for pictures of the truck and I was away! 

So size wise as you expect its spot on for bolt action, a fairly simple build however is your not used to working with resin and have come straight from a GW type gaming back ground then this kit could put you off with the prep that is needed.

Looking at the rules it can be used as a tow for arty as well as a transport, a good multi use model.

I thought I'd treat myself to a new piece of Italian armour as well,

This little beauty is from Blitzkeg miniatures, and is the Semovente 90/53. Used in Africa as well as the defence of Italy which makes it perfect for my themed force,

So the truck is just as bit as the armour, mind you its classed as a tankette with a whopping 7 armour. I think I'll be hiding this well!,

So over all thoughts with the truck from Company B, price wise its a tad expensive for the best part of 30 quid including delivery however I've not found any other people that do 28mm WW2 Italian transports, Yes I could use German and even British trucks but I wanted to give the army the uniform factor and all that jazz.The actual quality of the kit isn't too bad and once its painted up should look great.

On to the Semo 90/53, the kit is great, only 3 pieces and nice and simple to stick together, quality of the casting is nice and little to no clean up was required apart from the usual resin wash, I'd buy again from Blitzkreiq without a doubt if all the armour was to the same standard.

All I need to do now is sort out a date for a game with Dave at Portal and we'll see how the mighty Italians fair on the table top, I'm hoping a lot better than this evening over at Gifts for Geeks when Paul "educated" me with his assault rife totting FJ and a wonderful quad 2cm halftrack, less said of that the better really. However it was a good game and I've pretty much got the rules down to a tee.