Away for most of this weekend in Cambridge for my little boy’s baptising. So now he’s a member of the Anglican church. Managed to convert myself a Skeleton Champion last night from combination of the old Black Knight I had laying around and Empire + Skeleton plastics. Think he’ll do nicely. Must focus on assembling the rest of the Skeleton and then back to painting Cadians before revving up into painting the Undead. Rejigged my army list and discovered I can get to aroun 815 points by only purchasing 2 blisters of Fell Bats. Really should pick up or convert a Wight Hero as well, just to get that LD 9 in the force…

Assembled another three skeleton warriors for Vampire Counts. Discovered if I paint up another ghoul and can grub up three additional skeleton warriors I can drop the dire wolves from my border partrol force. That’s fine by me because I wasn’t looking forward to wasting money on these ugly plastic models. Fell Bats look like more my cup of tea!

Mr Griff has snapped and has purchased the Warhammer Fantasy rulebook. I suspect the Games Workshop marketing juggernaut got to him with the new Brettonians release. Still no matter! I have discovered that between figures purchased for my Mordheim Undead warband, Zombie sprues purchased for 40k Chaos conversion and Skeleton warrior sprues purchased for general err… skeletons, that I already have 80% of a Vampire Counts ‘Border Patrol’ force just laying around in my garage. So yesterday I assembled the front rank of a Skeleton Warrior core unit, including Musician and Standard bearer naturally and primed six Ghouls and a Banshee. All that remains is the purchase of two Dire Wolves blisters and quite a lot of assembling and painting. Also some desultory progress on Hirst Arts gothic church. Finally varnished that Cadian junior officer I painted a while back and finished the command squad missile launcher Cadian. Just a vox caster left to paint and the new command squad will be finished. Hmmm, wonder what I should do with the old command squad? Strip and repaint? Stick ‘em on TradeMe?

Assembled two vox carrying Cadians and patched that flamer Cadian ready for priming. Decided to take flamer out of command squad and just use him for one of the infantry squads. Cut candle end into facets and ‘press molded’ it in Klean Klay and resin for the ruined church. Must glue church foundations down and detail base before building up walls and tower. Some concerns about how easy it will be to move figures around in there. May have to ruin one wall quite extensively so you can get your hands in as usual for Mordheim terrain.

Finished two Lasgun Cadians and a Junior officer over the weekend. Inked meltagun, plasmagun and missile launcher Cadians. Almost got a command squad together but must patch and paint up a Flamer Cadian first. Almost at the stage where I need to assemble another handful of Cadians to paint. Figured mixing painting and assembling is the best way to complete projects as I enjoy assembling so much. Primed another three 1′ MDF tiles for Mordheim and did a few casting runs. Cut and primed a base for a Mordheim ruined gothic church with belltower. Assembled most of the church’s foundations. Want to do a big lump of Wydrstone that’s crashed through one wall and embedded in the floor. Might do some light wax carving and try a resin cast with a temporary Klean Klay ‘press’ mold.

Second Sentinel just needs some light detail painting on the base and it’ll be ready for varnishing. Inked a couple of Cadians last night and based the three painted guys. Still have to paint their bases of course but that’s trivial. Have discovered that plastic Cadians have very small eyes - so only a few of them will be getting pupils.

Man I’m really enjoying painting these new Cadians. The figures are unfortunately a little limited in their poses - mainly because GW have chosen to attach a lot of ‘hands to guns’ rather than ‘hands to arms’ - forcing you to use a fix set of arm positions for each figure. However it’s great to actually have a bunch of plastic Imperial Guard that *look* like serious troopers rather than the testosterone hopped up Arnie-Catachans. The existing Catachans in my force will most likely become an Elite ‘Hardened Veteran’ squad - with possibly a few wacky conversions added in there. The second Sentinel is about to stride into the varnishing area as well.