Inaugural Post

This is my first post on my first blog page, It came from the Hobby Room.  I'm starting this blog because I have recently been able to set up a dedicated hobby room where I can work on miniatures and terrain for my various interests in wargames and board games.  I first started painting back in the mid 90's, but this aspect of my hobbies was always slow due to career, family and lots of competing interests, practically stopping for about a decade until now.  I managed to keep tabletop wargaming by participating in game evenings and events with The Edmonton Wargame Group along with their annual MayDay convention.  There was always a chance to play in games put together by other members with their miniatures and terrain, and I could contribute with games using miniatures I had painted long ago or had purchased already painted by friends.  I also took advantage of some fine games that use pre-painted miniatures like X-wing, Sails of Glory, and Dungeon Command.  Suffice to say, folks playing in my games got familiar with using minis I had not painted myself.  With my hobby room now ready enough, I hope to bring new miniatures and terrain to colourful life, and expand the offerings and participation in events put on by this fantastic community.  Beware! for It came from the Hobby Room!

The shots below are of a miniature that I picked up in a lot from a silent auction long ago I believe held during a MayDay convention.  There was a wild assortment of miniatures in that lot, in various stages of assembly, priming and painting.  I was focused on getting a piece of terrain that came with them.  I have no idea what sculptor or range he came from.  Low and behold, years later, near the end of Terry's  Stargrave Campaign last year, I wanted to change things up with my crew and try something new.  My crew had been roasted several times by Kurts adept use of a Flamer soldier and my inept tendency to line my crew up in a row.  I found this guy and decided he would be great to add to my crew and enable games of duelling Flamers.  This was the last miniature I painted without the Hobby Room, though I was using paints newly acquired as restock after I found nearly all my old paints had dried out after years not being used.

Here he is with the most arbitrary and obscure scale reference I could think of:  the WOTC Pig Farmer

Soon I hope to show miniatures that I was able to paint within my hobby room, or with my roving paint station.  I picked up this sturdy paint station set a long time ago with the intent that I could easily move my hobbying into rooms where family was watching TV or chatting and not feel that I was always squirreled away in another room.  Sure, a lot of the time I will enjoy solitude while hobbying, but I don't think I will want to do that all the time.  Here is the finally assembled Games Workshop portable hobby station.  I believe a lot of hobby stations sold these days are plastic, so I'm glad I picked up this one when I did.  There is lots of space on it, as can be seen by the size of the WOTC Pig Farmer and the Chaos Dwarf Lamassu that has come into the shop for some repairs.

In the background, are the paint racks I bought from Jonathan.  Easy to assemble and very sturdy.

Here they are filled with an Army Painter Warpaints 1.0 set and a mish-mash of paints I've been able to recover so far from older sets.

I'm hoping this new space gives me the ability to get some of my collected miniatures painted and table-ready.  I intend to post my progress on new miniatures and terrain, and maybe make a few posts about some of my miniatures from long ago.  I may also get to review and comment on some of the tools and materials at my disposal for modelling, as I have a accumulated a few over the years.

Thanks for stopping by, hope to see you next post!