Wolfhound Freikorps: Shocktrooper Squad Painted!

Got the new squad of Shocktroopers painted up for my Wolfhound Freikorps.  This is the second squad for that army I have finished.  Next up is the veteran squad then I need to assemble some more.

The first step to solving the problem is admitting you have one.........

 I wasn't sure if I should make this post or not.  I took these pics over a week ago and was going to do this post at that time but then I decided against it.  Now I have changed my mined again.  A few weeks ago I decided that I seriously needed to re-organize my game stuff and purge some of the crap I have collected over the years.  I do this fairly often with varied amounts of success.  I have not done this since my last move and things are getting very out of hand.

 I have been collecting miniatures for about 28 years now.  I started when I was 10 or 11 and I still have some of my "first" miniatures.  My wife started the hobby when we started dating 19 years ago so for almost 20 years both of us have been buying miniatures and collecting other hobby related things.  Our daughter is 17 and even though she is not at into miniature gaming as my wife and I are she does game and has acquired a fair amount of gaming stuff herself.  

Two adults and one almost adult can sure collect a lot of gaming stuff.  Like I said we have purged and re-organized several times in the past but our collection is still huge.  Thousands of miniatures.  Hundreds of game books and all the supplies needed to do the "hobby".
 
We are also very adept at building our own terrain out of both traditional materials and random junk as anyone who follows this blog is aware.  That makes for a massive collection.  Our half finished and abandoned projects amount to more than a lot of gamers collect and we have a large collection of finished projects as well.

As I said right now we are in the process of re-organizing and purging yet again.  The pics above were taken a couple weeks into the process.  If we don't do this every now and again our project progress becomes impossible because we end up spending most of our time either looking for stuff we have misplaced or trying to find table space to work on things.  The problem is that we are at that critical stage where the things is getting away from us because of the sheer scope of the problem.  The pics above only show perhaps a quarter of our "hoard" and they are also the result of two weeks of purging quite a few things.

To be perfectly honest I feel like I need to get rid of 75% of my collection and I would still have enough stuff to keep me busy for a very long time.  In reality I will be lucky to actually unload or pitch 10% of the crap partly because I"ll probably get burned out before I get done with the process but even that will help.
My biggest fear is that right now we have plenty of room for a gaming stuff.  In fact we could cram a whole lot more stuff into our gaming and studio space without it taking over the rest of the house but I can't be sure that we won't end up in another place in the future that just isn't going to have room for the stuff we have.

 We have been in that situation before and had it pretty much take over the rest of the house.  That's not really fun.  I'm not really a hoarder by nature and while I can put up with clutter in certain areas I can't stand when it takes over the house and it gets to the point that I am embarrassed to even open the door when someone stops by much less have company over.

Anyway the point is that even though I love to game and I am lucky enough to have a wife and family who love it as well that in itself can be as much a curse as a blessing.  It makes it easy to over collect and over spend on gaming stuff and that can cause real complications.  I hope to get on top of this situation before I give up on it and just shove everything back into boxes and back into the corners and closets which won't help a dang thing.

Building the Wolfhounds

 We've started building up some new squads for the Wolfhound Freikorps.  At the moment we only have one squad done and three vehicles.  Getting the force to numbers we can field is part of our Winter projects this year so over the weekend and the last couple of days I put together a couple of squads for the army.
Above is a regular Shocktrooper squad built from the Wargames Factory Shocktroopers box.  I added a vox caster from the Games Workshop Cadian Imperial Guard squad to make one of them a com specialist.

For my Veteran Shocktrooper squad I used heads from the Wargames Factory Shocktrooper Heavy Weapons squad box.  I used some small backpacks from the Wargames Factory Male Zombie Survivors box on 5 of the squad members and a communications pack from a Games Workshop Catachan Jungle Guard squad.  I used a Games Workshop Plasma rifle for one of the special weapons trooper and a sniper rifle from a Wyrd miniatures modern weapons pack. (Or at least I think that is were I got it.)

Hopefully I will have these squads painted up soon.

Tanksgiving: Project Wrap Up!

Well I went a little over my deadline wrapping this up but I'm okay with that.  I managed to get 9 tanks and armored vehicles finished in one month for my Tanksgiving project and since I didn't start till the end of the first week of November and I just finished these at the end of the first week of December I'm still pretty happy with my progress.
I finished four vehicles for my Hell Knights Mercenaries bringing their vehicle total up to 13.  Three of the tanks are for my Wolfhound Friekorps which is my next big army project.  Two of them I just painted up as generic mercenary tanks for general use.

Tanksgiving update: Well Crap!

Well today didn't go as planned.  This is all the progress I made on my Tanksgiving marathon.  Not exactly what I had hoped for.  I just had too many things pop up today and I got too distracted with other task one of which I will detail tomorrow.

Tanksgiving Update: 5 Vehicle Mix!

I've been trying to finish up a few more tanks for my Tanksgiving marathon so I spent the last two days trying to build up several of my half finished projects.
My wife built the grey APC from the body of a cheap "Army Man" Patton tank.  We are going to be using it for the Wolfhounds.
The green 6x6 is from Secret Weapons Games and it is the only "kit" model I have done for this project.  It also cost about what the rest of the tanks in the project cost combined but it is a very nice model.  If I had the budget I'd buy at least a squadron.  I may pick up some more in the future.
The two smaller hover tanks in the front are based of a Matchbox toy.  These "Douglas" Medium Hover tanks are for my Hell Knights.  I already have one of these completed so this will bring me up to a full squadron.
The large hover missile launcher is a variation of my Landshark AFV called the "Hammerhead".  It is also for my Hell Knights.   It is built from a toy LAV-25 which came in a set from Dollar General and included the missile launcher as a tow behind weapon.  I simply converted it into a missile turret.
Hopefully I will get these painted by tomorrow night.

Tanksgiving Update: Two heavy tanks finished!

I finished these two tanks up today for my Tanksgiving Marathon.  This brings me up to four finished tanks.  Both are based on a $3.00 toy tank I picked up at the Dollar General store.  The green one is pretty much just a paint up and the camouflage one has had it's tracks removed and replaced with hover drives I scratch built from cheap razor handles.
Obviously the design owes a lot to my M1 Abrams MBT but it is a bit more narrow in design.
In my setting these tanks are produced by the same company.  The hover tanks obviously has less armor but greater speed.  The design designation will be the Laird MBT and Laird HHT respectively.  I've painted the hover tank up for my Hell Knights army with the company markings.  The tracked version I have painted up to be a part of a generic mercenary motor pool I am building so I have gone without giving it a company or national marking and have instead simply given it a name and number.
I intended to photograph these with some miniatures to show their scale.  They are pretty big.  Defiantly "heavy" tanks although they are not as big as the two Ligers I just finished. I'm happy with the way they turned out and they will likely be making an appearance in my campaign very soon.