Things have been quiet as I just didn’t have very much that was interesting to show on Hondo so I decided it was for the best to skip posting last weekend. I’m still on the precipice of where things get really interesting but at least we’re finally there. Here’s some photos of what I’ve been working on. Most of the progress has been on the back which is very nearly done now.
If there is one thing I regret on this mini, its that I didn’t just use a gold color scheme that I know instead of trying a new one. This one is very close to what I do with regular GW paint and it would have made the gold parts easier if I had just used that instead of trying something new. You live and you learn! Its hard to tell but this mini has a lot of curved surfaces which are a pain to glaze and its really hard to get the smooth results that I usually shoot for. There are plenty of places where it is about 90 or 95% of the way there but just a bit short, sadly. With this being one piece in a diorama and taking over two months to complete at this point, I feel like spending a lot more time trying to make everything perfectly smooth probably is not worthwhile at this point. I will say that the missing hand and what it is carrying will likely make an appearance soon. I’ve been working on painting it a bit and am eager to get that on Hondo as its the coolest part of the mini and after two months, I think we deserve to take a look at it!
There has been plenty of other things going on besides Hondo. I ordered the last thing I needed for some terrain stuff I want to tackle next and it was a bit more “exciting” than I expected or hoped. All I needed was some Vallejo basing paste, which I’ve purchased online before and not had issues with. The first one I received had a lid that got pretty cracked and paste spilled out too. I contacted the seller and they kindly offered to send a second one and it just came on Saturday and wouldn’t you know it, this one has a slightly less cracked lid but it still has the same problem where the stuff is going to be hard to keep sealed and the paste will dry up well before I can use it all. I’m not going to hassle the seller further as they were very kind to send a replacement. I think I’m going to have to get some kind of airtight container and transfer them both to that because it takes me a long time to use up basing paste since most Fallout minis don’t need it. What a strange situation and problem to have!
Since I hit a wall with Sentinels of the Multiverse: Definitive Edition (thank you to everyone who gave that long article a look as well!), I have been looking for a new game I could get that isn’t too expensive and doesn’t require painting miniatures. I decided to buy G.I. Joe Deckbuilding Game because it has a lot of positive buzz around it. I did my research and watched someone playing it (again, what a world we live in!) and I was impressed by how thematic the game seemed. Truthfully, I don’t have a strong connection to G.I. Joe though I did think it was cool when I was a kid. I might have gotten a G.I. Joe toy at some point but I don’t remember which one it was. So this isn’t like Lord of the Rings or Star Wars which hits my nostalgia bone (I don’t know but I like to think we all have one of those that companies ruthlessly exploit nowadays) but I was eager to give it a try. I finally did so on Friday and after goofing up rules and restarting twice, I played it and I enjoyed it. Its easily the best deck builder I’ve played and I’m curious to see how much mileage I can get out of the game. I did something that was probably foolish and went ahead and bought a bundle that comes with two expansions and some other goodies. Hopefully I really like the game and don’t regret getting the extra stuff. Time will tell and eventually, I will try and write up a review of the base game and potentially each of the expansions individually as well down the road. It will probably be a couple of weeks at least before I’ve played it enough to do that but that is my intention anyway.
Lastly, and briefly, you might have seen that GW teased more new miniatures which they do quite often these days and there a couple of things that were tantalizing. First off, there are some new Tomb Kings sculpts which certainly have my attention. I’ve always wanted to paint up the Tomb Kings and never got around to it in my Warhammer Fantasy foray twenty years ago. While I’ve been a bit bummed that GW is mostly just rereleasing really old sculpts again, they are slowly starting to release new ones which is much more of interest to me as a display painter. Both of the mounted miniatures below could be future projects from me as I like the look of them.
That skeleton vulture is just perfect, in my book! I hope that GW will keep releasing new sculpts for the classic Warhammer setting as that is really in my wheelhouse, much more so than even Age of Sigmar is.
The other thing that I would have thought would be exciting but was a little underwhelming to me (and my admittedly very narrow interest in Warhammer) is the Chaos Dwarves coming back after decades basically. The aesthetic of the new dwarves is definitely pretty different than the old while still retaining some of their flavor. While I like some of the minis, there’s almost none that I would paint for a display project. Even a guy like the one below which I quite like, has a base that GW has designed to be nearly impossible to alter much which is a shame. Maybe with time something will “hit me” on the Chaos Dwarves and I’ll have a go at one but for now, I don’t think its terribly likely which is a shame.
Those are just what stuck out to me, mostly because a lot of the other stuff was space marine related which is not something I gravitate towards as much as fantasy subjects. That’s more than enough for now too. I’m looking forward to working on Hondo and hopefully I’ll have some more cool things to show next week as I try to finish up the oversized ape!
Kuribo's Painting 
Nice work on Hondo, Jeff! 🙂 I’m surprised you’ve had problems with Vallejo basing material – I buy that regularly and have never had a problem with the jars being damaged.
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Thank you, John! I’m making progress anyway. I’ve been taken aback by it too. My suspicion is that the lids are getting damaged because the mail people have to hurl the package over a fence when they deliver it but that is only a guess on my part. Either way, its a very odd situation!
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Hondo still looking agood and coming along strong. The shading to black & near-black on his various armour plates gives a bit of a Borderlands-like effect – kind of like the pseudo cel-shading they use these days.
I feel for you on the terrain pots. I’ve used these “Overnight Oats” jars from Amazon to store mixes of terrain paste and wash that I’ve made which I want to keep and use over time while keeping a large mix consistent. Not sure if that link worked or not (wasn’t affiliate or anything) but they’re “squat” (low centre of gravity) and have an airtight rubber seal. Came in a 4-pack when I only needed one, but I’ve used a second one a couple of weeks ago and about to use a third, so worked out good.
I haven’t read the card game post yet (I will!) but I was wondering if you’ve played Marvel Champions? It plays solo/2handed/etc or “co-op” but it might also be too close to Arkham Horror or even too simple for you as a seasoned vet of these sorts of games.
I know a lot of people really liked the old Warhammer Quest Card Game from FFG, and it’s not a pvp game, so it’d be playable solo – though probably not that easy to track down. Might be one to pick up if you see it secondhand and not being scalped. Good to hear the GI Joe game is working for you. That’s an IP I have really no connection to at all so even if it were mechanically fun I’d probably just bounce right off it as a solo game, though more even more likely I’d never get it to the table and more likely than that I wouldn’t get it to the cart. Hopefully the game and expansions have enough interesting stuff going on to keep you entertained for a good while!
I do also really like those new Tomb Kings, but some of that range is still pretty (relatively) new, since they released a wave shortly before Squatting The Old World and then discontinued the line. There’s also some sweet looking stuff in the Cathay Range as well for painting. But yeah, I love the look of those Chaos Dwarves! I’d imagine the base of that one is a separate piece, or perhaps just has a boot attached so either of those would be pretty free to do anything you want (just use a different base/clip the boot off the base if attached) It’d be cool to see what you can do with that model or something similar (or one of the centrepieces – the Taurus Dreadnought-thing!)
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Thanks, mate! I hadn’t thought about going “cel-shaded” but I reckon it fits the subject matter pretty well so I’ll take it!
My wife and you think alike on storing all the paste! I’m going to order something very similar from Amazon to try and preserve it. If it doesn’t dry out, I’d guess I’ve got a few years of paste now, if not more.
Its funny you ask about Marvel Champions. I meant to include this information in the post and forgot. I was THIS close to getting Marvel Champions before I changed my mind. It looks like a great game, though it definitely has too much content for me to keep up with (its a younger game than Arkham Horror and has more releases by quite a bit, surprisingly), but I was still ready to buy it until I found out that FFG is not going to keep older stuff in stock any longer which I find bizarre as a business strategy. I’ve played two of their LCG’s and both work best when you get stuff in the order they came out. Its not that you HAVE to, its more just that’s the way the game was designed and so it works well to follow that. Maybe I’m too much of a completionist but the thought of not being able to buy it “in order” put me off getting it and so I pivoted to G.I. Joe. A lot of Marvel Champions stuff is out of stock here in the States currently but if you see some older releases at a good price, you might as well pick it up!
I have heard good things about Warhammer Quest. Its a shame that FFG couldn’t keep the license on that one as it could have been a pretty big hit for them. While I could easily be persuaded to try Marvel Champions in different circumstances, I’d like to see FFG start a new LCG as all of the ones they have are fairly old and it would be cool to see them acquire and use another big license but having said that, its very unlikely to happen in the current economic climate.
There are other minis I like in the Tomb King range though they tends to be the really big minis that look time consuming to work on (not that that completely puts me off of them!). I do like the Taurus Dreadnought mini probably as much as any of the new Chaos Dwarves. Sometimes a mini grows on me over time so you never know, a year from now, I may end up painting one of those rotten little dwarves yet! 🙂
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That’s interesting about Marvel Champions having content go OOP. I guess there have been a LOT of heroes over time, but I guess it more depends on how important it is/would be to you to have EVERY piece of content, as I can’t imagine that they’ll be letting the more well-received packs or boxes go permanently OOP. Like America Chavez might not stick around while I think Wolvering would be a much safer bet!
Certainly it’s a simpler(?) game in that both Marouda and I have been able to enjoy it playing co-op side by side using the default decks because I still just don’t quite grok deck-building in card games so I dunno – I’d still say it may be worth it for you to pick up a starter box and maybe an extra favourite hero or two and see how you enjoy the game – I’m not sure that the order really matters in this game as it’s not really a series of campaigns like Arkham – more a bunch of mash-ups with heroes combining against villain of the month – like in the comics!
As for the chaos dwarfs – turns out that the Daemonsmith model also makes the Ashen Elder – who comes on a different (shorter) base, so your concerns there may not be an issue. https://www.warhammer-community.com/en-gb/articles/sjcpuxok/the-big-summer-preview-bow-down-before-the-helsmiths-of-hashut/
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I can definitely understand it if FFG doesn’t want to overproduce less popular characters. I don’t quite know how they’re going to manage to keep people happy if they don’t reprint stuff but thankfully that’s not our problem to manage!
Its certainly possible that I’ll still pick up Marvel Champions at some point. Its intriguing as a game and Marvel is a great universe to game in as well. My impression is that deck building for it is a little more challenging than other games. Some card games like Magic have some general “rules” or guidelines you can follow which help you build a well-rounded deck. Marvel Champion’s resource system is a bit different than most card games and so that would probably make deck-building a little harder to learn or at least that is my suspicion as someone whose never tried! Arkham Horror and LOTR have their own wrinkles to deckbuilding too for what its worth.
That’s a good point on the base. I’ll keep my eyes on those dwarves and see if I can come up with something! Thanks for mentioning it, mate.
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nice progress on the monkey. It’s coming along really well. So the game thst you loved last week has turned cold already? lol.
GI Joe has a card game? Wonders will never cease. 😀
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Thank you. Hondo is getting closer and closer to the end… Finally!
I didn’t write the review for Sentinels until I had basically fully exhausted the contents of the game. I don’t know why I feel the need to do that, but I always want to be thorough and fair in my reviews.
We live in crazy times where everything is oversaturated and every nostalgic whim is catered to! 🙂
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You might not feel that you’ve progressed much with Hondo but I’m definitely enjoying the journey. It’s interesting that you’re trying a different gold recipe – do you think you’d stick with it in the future or revert to your tried and tested method? Keep it coming, I’m looking forward to seeing more of the General.
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Thanks, mate. You’re too kind as always! I like to try new things and gold has so many variations that I’ll like try out new ones in the future. I don’t think this scheme was worth the extra effort in the end but I’m glad I tried it out still, if that makes sense.
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