Oh joy. Apparently when the missus went to use the bike for work this morning the rear tyre was flat so I've somehow managed to puncture the new inner tube when putting it on.

Hi folks

Well it's been a month since my last post. Obviously Blood and Glory has been and gone which I'm still writing the battle reports up for (they're almost done but I haven't had the time to concentrate on them that I normally do which is why it's taking so long... look for them in the battle reports subforum soon).

Since Blood and Glory I've got pretty much no hobby done whatsoever. The only thing I've done is glue my BSB's banner back on that broke at Blood and Glory (my opponent at the time did lend me his glue but I couldn't get it to stick at the time).

This weekend I've got Raze and Ruin which is a local (in that I could walk there if I didn't have to take my army) tournament being won by Sandy Wilson. The list I'm using is essentially my Blood and Glory list just with the extra banners taken out and a couple of tweaks here and there.

I'm glad to see that you are still plugging away with the army Si, and its getting there slowly but surely

I have to say that I agree with Dave a bit - I'm sure there are some ways to speed up the painting process, even for high elves who do require a fairly crisp finish. I got a Loremaster of Hoeth from Element Games a while back that I won in a competition and I didn't really know what to do with him, but I think I'm gonna see if they can be 'speed painted' to a reasonable standard. If you don't mind I'll nick your colour scheme for it. I might be able to offer some tips or advice to get a quicker method that might help you. I managed to get my Warriors army done for Warrington this year using sprays and washes, and they came out reasonably well, and that was done pretty much in the spare hour I got in the morning when the baby and Natalie were asleep. They were not done to my usual standard, but they were still fairly crisp, and I'm sure some of the things I did there would work just as well on a high elf army.

Well I'll be interested to see what you can come up with for speed painting it up.

If you don't mind I'll nick your colour scheme for it.

No probs, as long as I can put a sign next to my army saying "Colour scheme as copied by Steve Wren" when I have to put it out for paint judging...

Just another quick update since there's not a lot been happening.

Since finishing up my Blood and Glory reports I've been writing up my Raze and Ruin reports. I'm not quite sure why it seems to be taking me quite a bit longer to write up the reports these days as I'm sure I used to get through them within a week.

Anyway, that's meant that I've not really got much of note done hobbywise. The only thing I've done towards it is putting my dragon model into a tub of Simple Green to soak so I can hopefully clean up the mess the previous owner made of undercoating it. Not that I'm necessarily planning on painting it up any time soon (if only because I want to do some tests on the colour scheme first) but more because I was sick of seeing it on top of the cabinet in the lounge it has lived on for the past few years.

With the Raze and Ruin reports almost done I'm going to have to sort out some models to take into work so I can start painting in my lunch breaks again. Probably going to work on my Island of Blood Swordmasters for now - some tidying up etc on the ones I've been using and then finishing touches to the other ones I was working on last year.

So here's the December update and essentially I'm doing what I said I was going to last time around. I've cleaned up the dragon as much as I can (unfortunately I don't have a deep enough tub and enough Simple Green to get to the core of the model) and I've been working on the Swordmasters I had started at the beginning of the year.

Will hopefully find some time over Christmas to do some photos of progress

Yo ho ho, merry Christmas to one and all, and all that jazz.

Have to say that this has probably been the most un-hobby Christmas I've had for a few years. Because of what I was getting for Christmas (a new electric razor, out of necessity rather than particularly wanting a new one) I couldn't ask the missus for anything Warhammer related as that was going to take up the bulk if not all of the annual present budget (plus questions might be asked about the White Lions she gave me last year that I still haven't finished cleaning up, not to mention the scenary from earlier years that is also in various stages of (lack of) completion). Struggling to think of what my mum could get me for Christmas I did ask her to get me Gav Thorpe's The Sundering collection but have only ended up with a few pairs of boxer shorts (plus some cash).

The closest I've gotten to any hobby this Christmas was when I rearranged one of the shelves in the bookcase where all my and the wife's Warhammer stuff that we have in the lounge is kept in order to make space for the overflow of DVDs and Blu-Rays now that my daughter's books are filling the lower shelves to bursting.

You could possibly count the club Christmas outing as vaguely hobby related as we went to see the latest installment of "I can't believe how little of this was actually in the Hobbit" aka "Legolas: The Movie" (although some cinemas may be advertising this as "The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug") given how much Orlando Bloom was in it. One of the guys who went commented afterwards that it was 2 hours 40 minutes of which only 40 minutes was actually in the pages of The Hobbit, although on further reflection I think that may be slightly generous towards how much from the book is in there. For some reason I didn't come away with the same sense of disappointment I had after An Unexpected Journey. Not sure if that's because DoS is a better film or just because I'm now resolved to the fact that in order to stretch the story beyond breaking point for the three film payday, Peter Jackson and co have tried to make it into a Lord of the Rings prequel rather than just adapt the book. Unfortunately I think it's the case that they've managed to turn The Hobbit into the Tolkien universe equivalent of Star Wars episodes I, II and III. And it appears a year hasn't seen Peter Jackson improve how jarring the High Frame Rate 3d of the film is (after having seen "An Unexpected Journey" in HFR I would have been happy just to see DoS in 2D or non-HFR 3D but the other guys wanted to see it in HFR)

Other than the lack of hobby the only thing of note lately is that I've managed to snag myself a cheap first generation Nexus 7 tablet. As I've been a bit unsure about whether I wanted or would make use of a tablet I'd decided to try and get a Nexus second hand but got something of a bargain as, having bought a model that was supposedly not working from a graded products seller on ebay with the intent of fixing it up, I found that not only was it working (if you bothered to work through Google's troubleshooting guide for the Nexus not starting up) but also the 32GB version, not the 16GB as advertised. At the moment I'm mainly using it for social media and reading through those of the Battle Scroll ebooks I've purchased, that is when I can get to use it. The wife, who is also contemplating getting a tablet to replace her laptop, has been hogging it to play Candy Crush (or whatever it is people play these days). I'm still debating whether to give it a try as an ereader for books or not (as I've decided to re-read The Hobbit so I can recall just how much has been inserted into the films that wasn't there in the first place I'm debating whether to get it in ebook format rather than carrying on with my aged paperback copy)

Hi folks,

I logged on to do this update and was surprised to find I hadn't done one this month so far. I was sure I'd done one in early January but never mind (I suspect the fact that's been hectic at work with us being understaffed and people being off sick has addled my memory).

So, since my Boxing Day update I have managed to get some hobby done at home, which has consisted of cleaning up my Reavers, Dragon Princes and White Lions. All the Reavers and Dragon Princes are now done and I'm part way through the White Lions (who, it turns out, I must have worked on a bit last Christmas when the missus got them for me as some of them had already been cleaned up). With an eye on going to Bloody and Glory again this year I had planned to convert up some Reavers as Standard Bearers but the method I'd planned on using, doing back banners, doesn't look like it'll work terribly well with the poses of the models. Once I've got the White Lions cleaned up I'm planning to get all the Reavers, including any command conversions, built and painted, mainly because I'm running two units of Reavers in my list at the moment but I'm having to proxy one unit as I've only got five assembled and painted for use.

My lunchtime painting at work has consisted of working on one of my batches of Swordmasters. Aside from the sword handles and a bit of tidying up they're done barring gems on the swords, which I'm leaving until I've had a chance to practice painting gems. Once this batch are done I'm planning to bring my other set up to the same standard - mostly that should just be a bit of highlighting and redoing the shading wash where I think I had it a bit too watered down when I did it the first time.

Gaming wise I've had a couple of games since the last update, as well as a game in December I didn't cover last time. My sole game in December was a 2500 point game against Sandy Wilson at the club. He was wanting to try out a list at that level as he was thinking of going to Battlefield Birmingham so as there were more points going I decided to try running a dragon list for a change (and, you know, actually make use of that dragon model that's mostly gathered dust for the past few years) which also had a bus of Dragon Princes, a couple of Lion Chariots, a couple of Fire Mages, some Spearmen, a couple of Reaver units and a couple of small Archer units. Somewhat to my surprise, given that it's a completely different list to what I've been using and that I'd always lost against Sandy the other times I'd played him, I ended up giving him a complete pasting. We're due to play again tomorrow night at the same points, although now I know it's Sandy's practice for a specific event I've tweaked my list to bring it in line with the comp (mainly having to make some changes to the Dragon Prince bus since they were over the unit points cap). Now he's (I'm assuming) had chance to get some more games in with his list and tweak it, I'm expecting normal service to be resumed.

My club game this month so far has been a 2400 points game against Derek at the club. Partly because I was interested in running the dragon list again (and mostly because I couldn't be arsed to sort out models to revert back to my normal style of list) I ran a slightly altered version of what I'd used against Sandy while Derek was using a Dogs of War army (using the current fan made book). He'd run it once before, although this was tweaked a little bit, but this was another win to me, although not as emphatic. That was mainly down to the Prince and dragon ending up going in alone against Derek's Paymaster's Bodyguard where most of his characters were, thanks to the Dragon Princes failing a charge into a war machine that I was going to angle up so the overrun would mean they could support the Dragon. The Prince died in the first round of combat, although fortunately the dragon passed its monster reaction test and ground wounds off the unit until the Dragon Princes managed to join the fray. While I got his general later, by the time the bodyguard broke, with the dragon in pursuit, the dragon was on its last wound and got shot off.

Finally, this week I had a game against regular opponent Andy. To try something a bit different we ran 1200 points with no magic, no magic items and only one war machine each. Andy decided to run out a Hellstorm Rocket Battery, two minimum units of Knights, some Pistoliers and blocks of Halberds, Great Swords and Flagellants, all led by a Witch Hunter. I had two lots of 10 Silver Helms, an RBT, two mounted Nobles (one being the BSB), two eagles and a block of White Lions. Everything pretty much went my way during this game as I took off everything barring one unit of knights for the loss of only the RBT and an Eagle. The main hairy moment was when the Hellstorm landed on my general's unit with 3 shots, fortunately aside from three Helms lost to the first shot the others didn't get past the armour saves.

Oh, one bad bit of hobby news. When I was packing away the other night I was moving my Dreadstone Blight which was on top of my box of woods. As I wasn't moving it far, just from on top of my army box where I'd put it while the table was being put away, I wasn't holding it too tightly and I'm sure you can guess what happens next.

So now the first floor and stairs have come off as well as one of ruined wall bit that goes on top of the first floor. Trying to look on the positive side, it might make it a bit easier to figure out how to get the first floor properly secured to the building.

Just a quick update.

So, I'm now onto my Swordmasters that I've actually been using in games and trying to get them up to the same standard as the larger set. Some slight hobby wobbles today as I wondered whether I should add a bit more gold in to make some of the detail stand out a bit more on the models where I wasn't overly sure washing was bringing out enough details.

In the picture below the Swordmaster on the left is one I've added some more gold to today while the one on the right is one I haven't done. Looking at them now I don't think I'm actually comparing a model without the gold with wash on it (or at least in the areas where I'm testing applying the gold) and I don't think the one with the gold has had any wash on it at all.

While I think the extra gold would probably work better, in terms of actually getting these models finished I might just try another wash to bring out the detail