My Current Hell Knights Army and the painted Woflhounds force

 Just felt like posting a pic of my Hell Knights army as it stands at this point.  There are 56 troops and 13 vehicles bringing the army total to 69 pieces.  Of course I have quite a ways to go before I "finish" this force but it's a pretty decent army worth several thousand points in No Limits which give my quite a bit of variety for most games in our campaign.

The Wolfhounds have a much more modest force but considering that at the end of October they consisted of only one six man squad I'm very happy with the progress I have made.  I'm planning on focusing on this force for my winter work break and hopefully I will add another 12 troops and a few more vehicles so it will be a nice little army by early in January.

Wolfhound Infiltrators build.

 I spent part of the weekend putting together a few more figures for my Wolfhound Freikorps army.  The assassin is a Reaper miniature with a SMG from the Wargames Factory Male Zombie Survivors boxed set.  The Jägers are built from Wargames factory Shocktroopers using the flat cap head for every member of the squad.  They will be infiltrators for the army serving as scouts but they will have veteran stats so they will be more like Rangers or Commandos than Scouts.

I used entirely too much kit for these guys and used entirely too many kits to scavenge the pieces.  I even scratch built two sets of grapple lines out of green floral wire.  They are kind of ruff and I considered ordering some better bits to customize these guys but I decided I should stick with some stuff I already have because my game budget seems to get tighter every month.
These guys will probably be a pretty expensive squad since each member has a rifle, pistol, and hand to hand weapon as well as grapple lines but I think they will be effective.  They are also going to be a pain in the butt to paint.  I will probably paint their coats in some kind of Germanic looking camouflage.

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.