This update is going to be a bit like the food that people tend to put out for Christmas. Its going to have a bit of everything in it. A lot has been going on outside of the hobby for me over the last couple of weeks. My dog was passing blood in her urine which was a bit scary but easily rectified with some medicine thankfully. I traveled to my hometown for Christmas and then got back home a couple of days ago. Unfortunately, I’ve been sick ever since I got back. Its mostly been a sore throat and a lot of aches though I’m starting to cough more and have a runny nose so hopefully that’s a sign that things are getting better. For those that were curious, my Dad has indeed put the pangolin in a case and put it in a prominent place in his office so that was nice to see. I won’t talk too much more about Christmas and what I received because my main present is arriving soon. More on that next week!
I visited Cincinnati, which is where I grew up and fought for many years for the ability to move to somewhere bigger and more exciting. For those who don’t know, Cincinnati is modest sized city in the Midwest. There are tons of other cities within a couple hour’s drive and if not for Cincinnati’s many sports teams, I don’t think it would stand out amongst other US cities. Cincinnati is famous for its unusual Greek-invented chili. It is spaghetti, chili, and a mountain of cheese. You can optionally get beans and/or onions added if you like. Alternatively, they have coneys which are hot dogs with chili and cheese on them so there’s all manner of strange and unique dishes served in Cincinnati!
Cincinnati chili an acquired taste and people either tend to love or hate it. Outside of that, Cincinnati has a pretty good zoo and not too much else to recommend it. Cincinnati is the British equivalent of maybe Middlesborough or Blackburn. It is a city but not an important one and its sport teams are generally terrible but still beloved by the people that live there. Strangely, there is an attraction in Cincinnati that claims to be the largest model railroad setup in the world. I have no idea if that is accurate but long story short, it is unfortunately going to close in a few months and I never got a chance to see it. I was able to rectify that a few days ago and I was pretty impressed by Entertrainment Junction.
I’m not super knowledgeable about train scales but they use one of the larger scales and have a bunch of different setups in a large warehouse, essentially. Surprisingly, the layout is two stories tall and they give you some opportunities to look down over most of the train track which was nice. The city portions were incredibly detailed and even included figures in buildings which is hard to see in the pictures. There are buttons that control things like trams or trains on limited tracks and if you press it, they will move back and forth. Its very impressive to take in. I’ve always enjoyed model railroads and nearly got into that hobby when I gave up on miniature painting in high school. I don’t live in a place where I have lots of room to do that sort of thing now but if I ever did, perhaps I’d give it a whirl finally.
If you were wondering where the train display is going, it sounds like they’re going to somehow move it all to Chattanooga, which is in Tennessee. It is a strange choice to move it there (though it sounds like that is where the buyer is located so it makes sense) and I think fewer people will see it since Chattanooga is not really much of a city at all but I was glad I finally visited and I thought a few of you might find it interesting as well.
Getting back to our hobby, I’ve been working on Grunthal when I can and have made pretty solid progress. I have a bit of a swerve for you too. You might have thought he was going to have brown or red hair like most Dwarf slayers in the Warhammer world but I wanted to go in a completely different direction all along. It took me a while to get the hair color right and my first attempt was a failure in terms of color choice. Painting hair is a bit different on busts and you need to be a bit more creative to make it look good. You can’t just pick out the ridges in the hair and call it a day, in other words. Thankfully, I’m pretty happy with the hair now. I just need to keep plugging away at it. I also keep trying to get the eyes to be perfectly aligned and am having trouble. I also didn’t do a good job of matching colors for the whites of the eye so now the white in one eye doesn’t look right. I’m going to try and get that fixed soon and will probably leave them alone afterwards. I also made some subtle changes to the skin tone and that has really paid off nicely. Here’s a look at what Grunthal used to look like and where he is now so you can see what I mean.
There’s plenty more work to go but he’s starting to come together pretty nicely now. I’ve had a good time working on this bust so far so hopefully that continues in the coming weeks as I try to finish up this project successfully.
I also managed to get a game of Hellboy in today and had a pretty good time trying out all of the new minis I painted. I got to try out the B.P.R.D. Archives expansion which lets you randomly generate a mission instead of having to play the designer created ones. I chose to use the new creatures I’ve been working on which includes witches, harpies, bats, and wolves and I found them to be a fun change of place. They have different rules and stats compared to the frog monsters and are slightly easier to kill but also a bit more dangerous on the attack. Unfortunately, things started to unravel as the game went along and I ended up in a bad situation where half of the board came to life, including the boss, Baba Yaga, and came after me!
I was nearly able to see the enemies and Baby Yaga off but the werewolves were too much for me to overcome. Each turn a new one would appear as they called out to each other and they’re pretty dangerous compared to regular enemies, unfortunately for Hellboy, Abe Sapien, and Lobster Johnson!
All in all, Hellboy is still a great game in my opinion and the B.P.R.D. Archives expansion delivered a fun time with a few nice surprises along the way. I got some ideas for things I should focus on painting in 2025 as well so that will be helpful. I wouldn’t be shocked if I eventually get some of Mantic’s Terrain Crate goodies so that I can ditch the cardboard tokens and make the game fully 3D since I enjoy it so much.
That’s all for me for 2024. I hope you all have a happy New Year’s and I will see you in 2025!
Kuribo's Painting 
Grunthal is looking great, I think the choice of hair colour will work great. I actually like the eyes, the fact that one is very slightly off coloured to me looks like the scar he received just damaged the eye a tiny bit.
Looking forward to seeing more on him next year.
And I’ve very pleased to hear that you dog is feeling better, hope you shake your seasonal cold just as quickly!
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Thank you for the kind words, mate! I like your interpretation of the varying eye color much better than the reality of it being my mistake š I should be able to get the eyes fixed soon thankfully and I hope to have more progress to show off on this guy soon too. He’s been fun to work on thus far!
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Iām glad the doggy is ok and Iām sure youāll be ok soon too. Gunthral is looking phenomenally good mate.
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Thank you, mate! I’m glad she’s doing better too. Glad to hear you like the dwarf so far too. With that mohawk he’s sporting, I figured you wouldn’t have any complaints on this one š
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I think I can just echo the Lord Commander and IRO here! š I like the sound of Cincinnati food mind you and what’s not to like about model railways! Hope you have good New Year!
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Thank you! I don’t know that you’ll be popping by to try Cincinnati chili but if you do visit the city, definitely give it a try š Happy New Year to you and your family, John!
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Hope you and your dog both feel better soon, as being ill can really drain the motivation.
Great looking train setup and good you finally got to see it before it moved, and some interesting food choices available ! LOL
The bust is coming along great, and I agree with everyone above, that the slight variation in the eye adds to the effect of the scar damage. the hair colour is looking good, I can’t remember whether it was Chris Achilleos, or Phillip Hardcastle traditional artists, one of them did a really good reference on colours and where to highlight for hair, may be worth having a look at.
Sounds like you are still enjoying Hellboy, and has inspired you to keep adding to your enjoyment.
Great to hear your Dad found a display case for his Pangolin.
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Thank you, Dave! The dog has been feeling better than both my wife and I the last few days but I’m on the mend and getting better day-by-day.
Thank you for the kind words on the bust as well. I will have to give those two artists a look and see what I can find. A lot of the challenge is adjusting to the larger scale. Some things that we’re used to in smaller scales doesn’t work as well on a bigger mini. There’s always something new to learn in the hobby which is not a bad thing, I reckon!
I was glad to see the pangolin in my Dad’s office too. That proves to me that he is very happy with the gift which is exactly what we were hoping for.
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Love the painting thus far, and glad you are on the mends – I too pick-up a cold after visiting home. Food from home, yeah, I’m sitting here on the computer shoveling scrapple and rye bread into my face. Both take aways from the Philadelphia area that you just can’t find anyway here in North Carolina, lol!
Anyway, I always enjoy your painting style, even if I don’t aways comment. If you’re tight on space for a trian layout, remember that N and Z scales have come a long waySince I first dappled with model trains back in the 80’s, and would make a nice smaller round-around layout or a decent sized operational yard if your looking to just “play”.
Happy New Year!
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Sorry to hear that you got sick on your holiday travels as well, Eric. I hope you’re feeling better now too. I’m glad you got some fine Philly cuisine too! It would be pretty surprising if they had anything beyond cheesesteaks in North Carolina š
I appreciate your kind words and no worries on not commenting frequently as well. I think that I have some N scale stuff childhood home so I can definitely make use of it, if I ever get into model railroading. I like the really small scales. There’s something charming about it to me anyway! I just need a little more storage room than I have because my modest gaming collection takes up most of what I have.
Happy New Year to you and your wife!
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I flew through Cincinnati once and had enough time on the layover to have the chili, I liked it! The Cincinnati Reds were my baseball team of choice for awhile as my family lived in Ohio for a year. Pete Rose is a HoFamer no matter what they say.
Glad to see you got a game in., Happy New Year!
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You’re going to make a lot of friends in Cincinnati with those sentiments! Pete Rose definitely meant a lot to people of your generation.
The Reds haven’t won a world series since 1990 so they’ve had a lot of years of misery in my lifetime. Though I just checked and the Mariners have never won so I guess it could be worse…
Happy New Year to you as well! I look forward to seeing what you get up to in 2025!
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What a fun post, you always pack so much into your updates.
I’m very glad that your dad liked the Pangolin – I like to imagine that it is the start of a new hobby for him as he invents a skirmish game based around Pangolins Of Unusual Size.
Grunthal continues to impress. I always enjoy seeing which bit of your WIPs will burst into fruition each time and his beard is lovely. It’s a good idea to show the ‘before’ picture too, it helps to mark the contrast.
I also enjoyed reading about Cincinnati, and especially your very apt comparison to British towns. Talk about knowing your audience!
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There are some perks to writing about whatever you feel like or least there have been in my case!
The pangolin will now have to escape its plastic prison which sounds very much a wargame objective to me š
I’m glad you like the before and after format I’ve been using. My hope is that it helps everyone see the changes without having to jump between articles, which is no fun.
Well, I’m chuffed that I got the comparison right! I had to do a bit of research and think about British towns that I know from following the Premier League for probably about ten years š If only I could do a halfway decent British accent (any of the 1,000 you’ve got on your fair island!), then I could really blend in on a future visit!
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Your knowledge of British accents is probably better than my knowledge of US accents. As an example, I used to watch The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air in my youth but it was only decades later that I realised that part of the humour was meant to come from Will Smith having a Philadelphia accent and everyone else being from Los Angeles.
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I know some of the British ones anyway and your accents vary wildly depending on the accent. I would say that American accents are pretty muted and I think that they’re becoming more and more so over time. For example, I’ve been alive for almost 40 years and I don’t know what the Philly accent sounds like. I could recognize a Scouser from a mile away, go figure!
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