Life Update

Howdy do folks,

So a little life update, I passed my Resit of my Unix exam so I have a BSc in Computer Networking, so whoop.

Went to the first ever UFC in this great, mighty small nation on the planet, there was one bad fight all night, and all three Scots won that night, the atmosphere was out of this world, UFC's in the US aren't like that, but Europeans, we bring the sane atmosphere we do to Football matches.

Back on a painting kick after having painted two whole fleets of Dystopian Wars Air fleets for the Claymore show, which was alright but it wasn't anywhere as good as Carron adequate,  which we got a special mention in Wargames Illustrated.

I painted a 50 soul stone crew for Mali faux,  it came out awesome all but the Crew leader that is.

I'm in the middle of painting my younger brother's Warhammer Khorne army, it'seems going very well at the moment. Managed about 40 chaos warriors so far, I'll post pictures when I'm done.

I'm single which sucks but we persevere.

I've been a bit broken for a couple of months, my back hasn't been doing well at all, all stemming from an idiot screw up trying to do a single takedown with a lift rather than a drove. Dumb ass move it was.
This means I've put the weight I had lost this year back on. But I will be hitting the training again soon. And I started doing Yoga to see if that can help with the back.

A World of Their Own, a book of Short stories by members of the Alliance of World builders, a group of writers including myself, that met on the now defunct Authonomy website, is due to be released on the 4th of September on Amazon in the UK and USA, it'll be £8.99 in the UK and $13.99 in the US for the paperback and £1.99 and $2.99 for the Ebook, I'll be doing my usual shilling like a villa over the next week.

All proceeds to the book are going to the World Literacy Foundation, which is an awesome charity who try and get youths out of poverty through literacy and education.

Oh, my baby sister had a little girl, Zoey, and she is the most gorgeous, cute, lovely little pudding of a baby. She is awesome.

So, that's pretty much it for now.

I'm Back

Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen,

It is indeed I, your favorite neighborhood wacko foul mouthed, angry Scotsman.

It has been a good long while since I posted, there was the massive the massively drunken rant over the UK blackout of events on Fight Pass, I got over it since I get BT Sports for free and just record it, but apart from that there hasn't been anything since the Referendum, which I'm just going to say much other I'm bummed about, but come May hopefully the Westminster Establishment of theives, cunts, pedophiles and wankers are going to be kicked squarely in the arse by the rolling freight train of the renewed vigour of Scottish interest in how we are governed, and how badly we've been getting shafted by the Tories, the Red Tories and the Yellow Tories.

I passed two of my units for the first half of my Uni 3rd year, the one I failed was Unix and it was the exam that I failed miserably but it doesn't help when you the study materials you have don't even remotely match what's in your exam, you can't study the whole of Unix, it's frigging impossible. Hoping this half won't be as bad, doesn't seem like it (Helps that HTML and Javascript doesn't have an exam) and I get to resit in August so won't be repeating and wasting a whole year on it.

The Dystpian Wars extraveganza is rolling on, 6000 points strong of Prussians and 4000 points strong of Russians, and while we are fighting the Battle of Gibraltar at Carronade in very early May, the Rock itself is being crafted masterfully by the great George Dick, is rolling along quickly and not absolutley prepared for it, but I'll be orgainising that little bit in the ext few weeks, emails need to be sent and the delivery of members of the clubs who cant be there's ships needs to be arranged.

On the Wargaming front still and I just spent over £200 on a new World War II American army, with the required Sherman, in 28mm for Chain of Command by Two Fat Lardies and Bolt Action by Warlord. Pictures will be forthcoming when the painting is complete. Yes, I am a glutton for punishment and always give myself more work than I can handle but screw it.

Yet again staying with Wargaming, I will be taking part once again in the Scottish Battletech Championship this year at the Schiltron Wargaming tournament, hoping to make up for last years debacle with a top half finish this year. If you are interested I believe there are some places still available for Battletech so if you pop along to the website and have a look see

On the writing side of things, I am in the middle of working on the first draft of Warrior Rising, it is the new title of my first Caleb (originally Calibern) O'Hearn novel, it is actually a completely different book from Running out of Space which along with the several books that I started since I began that, got stopped because I couldn't take them anywhere at a certain point cause I didn't feel it (maybe because I'm an idiot and didn't have a plan for any of them). This was precipitated by a conversation I had in the Pub (oh, everyone has to be surprised by that) with my good friend Ferdinand, big crazy Dutch Philosopher in chief of Rufus T Firefly, about how I always start things and have great plans for them (or not really in my case) but they always go to shit, I started afresh with a brand new book but using the back story I had created for him and a number of the characters, sat down and went through all the backlog of stuff I had written and then made a plan of the novel section by section who the characters would be that were in the story. It'll be finished at the end of August this year, drafted, read by people I trust, drafted, read, drafted and then polished up and in September I  begin shopping it around publishers after that and if I don't get a bite I will be self publshing for this time next year.

In other writing news the Alliance of Worldbuilders is in the final stages of prep (I'm a lazy shit and only just wrote my Bio) the irrepresible and awesome Sammy HK Smith, author of In Search of Gods and Heroes, mother of Cats (seriously she has a whole fuck load of them), one of the head honchos of Grimbold Books is working her way to completing that, I have two short stories in there, Mr Gabriel of Alba, protagonist of my Urban Fantasy work is hacking away and shooting spells at people in there, so watch this space or my facebook or even my Google+ feed for that and if you haven't bought and read In Search of Gods and Heroes why the hell not?

This year also as part of my attempt to become healthy and fit once again, am seriously (aposed to fucking around with it for short periods) taking up  Muay Thai and Brazilian Jui-jitsu as part of an MMA orientated regime, it will encompasse eventually the whole spectrum of training in MMA but I'm starting with the hard bits first. Also I begin 352 days of no Booze, that's correct no more drunken ramblings for almost year, as of  the 16th of March, conveniently those 352 days land on the end of my birthday celebration period of one year and end at the beginning of the celebration period of another year, not really all that convinient since I sent the time limit. I reckon if I can go that long without booze after losing three stone over three months without it, I will be a lean mean and less angry machine by the end of the 352 days, that and I'l save a shitload of money.

That's about it for this particular blog, as I am about to eat dinner and head out to Falkirk for some Chain of Command, first outing of my new army.

Peace, love and all that good shit.

Prussian Empire Fleet

My Dystopian Wars Prussian Empire fleet, painted in two different versions of a grey paint scheme for the boats, a blue scheme for the bombers and tiny flyer tokens and a green scheme for the Airships, the two Metzger class robots are a lighter grey with red helmet.

All paints used were Vallejo and washes were either made from Vallejo paints or old Games Workshop washes that I've had since the mid 90's.

The ship basic hull base colour was medium sea grey, and either washed with neutral grey for shading and then dry brushed a light grey for highlight, or again medium sea grey, dry brushed neutral grey for shading and then a lighter grey for highlight.

I decided on the two different plank colours because the darker one was a massive pain in the rear end, and on the smaller ones it wasn't exactly a huge amount of fun. But there was also the fact that I wanted them painted as if they came from two different yards. The darker batch were painte first with German Camo black brown, and the individual planks were then painted Burnt Umber.

The second type of planking was easier due to the deck being painted light brown, then a wash of burnt umber mixed up and applied to the deck.

Most of the weaponry that isn't turreted is painted in a mix of Gold and Copper as are little details on the ships, like hatches and the little rings that are spaced about the ships, though some of them are mithril silver from the GW line from the mid 90's. The turrets are all painted similarly to the hull with bronze fittings and gun metal blue barrells.

 The two largest ships in the picture weren't painted by me, they were done by my dad as was the sea carrier, which anyone who knows him would be able to pick out since he painted the tiny flyers in Seattle Seahawk colours. He painted ships from my fleet until I got him Covenant of Antarctica ships and then he had his own to paint.

The Aerial section of my fleet was actually bought of ebay painted but the scheme didn't totally fit with the rest of the ships in the fleet, I made the piping the same bronze I used for the rest of the fleet, and the Tesla coils in the copper and gold of the rest of the ships Tesla parts. I also painted the tail fins like the fighters for the Imperium Sky Fortress, the deck of it painted like the second half of the fleet. Since I didn't know the colour used for the blimp sections I re-painted them since when I repainted the weapon sections to tie in with the rest of the fleet there had been too much splash onto the rest of it without repainting. 

 The tiny flyer bases for the Aerial section are in a different scheme from others they are a black dry brushed with silver. With the same tail fins as the Airships, the green wing tips are for Dive bombers and red tips are for fighters.

 The Metzger class robots were partially done by me and partially by my dad. The bases are actually cast that way, which is cool.

The Rhine class carrier has tiny flyers with the Seahawks colours and Torpedo bomber wingtips as do the fighter bases that came with it.

The chimney stacks are all black drybrushed with bronze then some are painted with the Prussian flag hoop colours. And the windows are painted white first then little drops of ink are put in each one. Most if not all the ships that I painted have their pipes picked out in bronze.

Both Blucher class Dreadnoughts along with the Konnigsberg class battlecruisers in the front. Some of the ships in the fleet have little Prussian Empire Flag decals and/or Iron Crosses, the ones that are on are the best from the batch I made up. Didn't leave the paint to dry long enough and the decal film made most of them run, and when I took them off the paper they went to crap. I need to go back to the clear Decal paper too and paint the white sections on the models, the white paper doest work as welol, especially when it means you have a big white section where there shouldn't be one.

 The Gewitterwolke class Airship and Geier class Bomber which like the tiny flyer tokens are painted a base deep sky blue, then washed in the GW blue wash to shade and dry brushed deep sky blue mixed withwhite to highlight, you can see the wing tips are painted dark green to signiy the are bombers and red tailfins for the Wing they belong to.

 The Prussian Empire flag on the airship is one of the homemade decals for my fleet, taking decal paper printed on an Inkjet allowed to dry and covered in decal film which I let dry.

 The whole Aerial group with the Gewitterwolke & Plicht class airships, Imperium Sky Fortress' and Geier class bombers, and one of the Metzger class robot 

There are two lots of regular Tiny flyer Wings one with red tailfins and one with orange tailfinns.
The yellow wing-tipped squadrons are recon fighters, light green is torpedo bombers. The bases were done by putting blots of blue wash the a drop of white paint and letting it swirl and mix so it's like they are lifting up and down through the clouds, though some of them are moving through grey clouds.

One of two squadrons of Reiver class cruisers.

One squadron of Arminus class frigates 

The Saxony class corvettes

The Stolz class Destroyer squadron

While I've still got the varnishing and the basing to do the whole experience has been fun, and it happens to be the first time I've ever finished painting a fleet or army in my twenty years of painting. I'm going to do the bases using plywood, covered in mastic and painted in sea colours.

Painting is fun.

Okay, so for my Christmas I got a whole load of new toys in a Dystopian Wars Prussian Empire fleet, something I decided after just one game of it, never done that before, normally takes a couple of games for me to buy even the rules.

So, my dad see's them and goes, oh I like them I'd like to paint some, and of course he pulls the Dreadnoughts, the aircraft carrier and my Metzger robots along with my Destroyer squadron to paint which was cool cause it means the centrepieces of the fleet are expertly painted.



I  let him decided on the paint scheme on the ships but I decided on what to do with the fighters bases and the bombers I went for a Vallejo Deep Sky Blue base, then inked them with Citadel Blue ink, then shaded them Vallejo Dark Prussian Blue then I used a darkened sky blue with grey to highlight.

The bases were a happy accident in that I was trying to figure out a way of getting the sea look without modelling the base didn't work out so well in that case but it does have a good look of dropping out of the clouds, some of them didn't come out so good ....

 Which is why I painted some of them grey so that they are going through grey clouds rather than white.

So, the tail fins show that they are of the same wing, the wing tips are to distinguish which squadron they are in, red for recon, yellow for fighters and dark green for Dive bombers. 

This is one of my two Geier bombers though it was in it's finishing stages it still has the front and tail turrets and the decking painted, along with the cockpit and a couple of details
 

This is all my flying stuff painted so far.

Next up were the ships I decided I'd paint before the senior Mr Muir could get anywhere near them, cause after all this was my own painting project for the year, though I think I might actually have them painted before I hit my birthday, which I'll be getting a Russian Fleet, nobody in the Glasgow club has ay of them and my dad's talking about getting a Covenant fleet for his birthday, and since I've got an Imperial bond fleet and I'm not a fan of the FSA ships or really the Brits, I decided on the Russians.

 So this is one of the Arminus class frigates like all the others I started with a black undercoat, then on the hull I painted Vallejo Dark Seagreen, shaded Dark sea grey, then highlighted Neutral grey. Then I painted the decking using German camouflage Black Brown from the Vallejo panzer range and then each plank was individually picked out with burnt umber..

 Painting the decks almost drove me to distraction, any way the gun barrel was painted Vallejo gunmetal blue.

 The Emperor class battleship was actually the easiest to paint the deck of the turrets were painted the same colour of the hull as was the bridge section. The aft and broadside guns are painted copper and the tesla coils are painted gunmetal blue.

 The Riever class cruisers are essentially painted the same as the Emperor except smaller, the funnels and the piping is bronze like everything else and I've started on covering them in the Prussian flag colours.

 On the Konigsberg class Battle cruiser I painted the Speerschleuder in gunmetal blue.

 The Saxony class was the hardest to paint, because it's so wee and there is very little room to do the shading and highlighting on the internal parts.

All of the ships together 

 Top views of the ships, better way of gauging the deck.

Looking forward to getting them onto the table next Sunday at the Glasgow club, My Prussians and an allied battlegroup of Empire of the Blazing Sun against a Kingdom of Britannia fleet with Federated States of America allies. Photo's and report will come afterwards.