feltmonkey

England are self-destructing at the moment.

So fucking lucky Pickford!

Ramos deliberately lead with the elbow there. How does he get away with it so often?

Uh-oh

Should be 4-0, that was a penalty. This is mad. Completely brilliant stuff.

Are you saying they're picking a weakened team? I suppose they must be if he's getting a game.

Thanks guys! I do have a couple of pics of other entries, although not all of them sadly. I wasn't sure if it's good form or not to post photos of other people's work, but I suppose the store posted them on their facebook page already, so it's probably alright. I'll post some tomorrow.

I mentioned earlier that I entered Armies on Parade, and here are a few photos. Edit - sorry, this turned into quite a lengthy blog post. A week ago last friday (the 5th) my board looked like this - Photo features a guest appearance from my feet. I didn't have a hot wire cutter, so I had to saw the blue foam by hand, which was a lot of work and took a lot longer than I had planned. Getting to this point took all Friday. From this point, I glued all the foam down with Gorilla Glue (which is incredible stuff), as well as some stones I stole from in front of the leisure centre, before smearing polyfiller over the whole board, smoothing the angular corners of the foam, making the whole thing look more natural, and filling in the gaps around the foam and rocks. Obviously I avoided the rocks with the filler. When this was dry, I glued on a few leftover treemen bits as roots, and then added sand over the top of the board, using some spray glue. Next, I spray painted the whole thing black. This was a necessary step, but I really wish I had found a cheaper black spray paint to do it. The can I used was £8 and I used almost the whole can! Anyway, next I sprayed a muddy brown over the top. This was the reason I sprayed it black first - to vary the tone of the mud over the board, and to have some subtle shading. I could spray lightly on some areas to keep them dark, then spray more paint on where I wanted it lighter. I didn't want a uniform brown. This might have been a bit pointless when you see what I did later, but it was important to me. By Sunday night it looked like this - This photo features a guest appearance from a View-Master in a plastic tub. Next, it was time to add the grass. I used my spray glue again, having first bluetacked over the roots and rocks, because I didn't want to cover them in grass. I also covered the river by holding a piece of card in the way of the spray. I used a couple of different types of flock grass to add some variety again. Once this was all finished and stuck on, the next evening I painted the rocks, roots, and river bed. By Monday night it looked like this - Tuesday night was spent adding a water effect to the river, plus some wash and drybrush to the rocks and roots. Wednesday night I added another coat of the water effect. Thursday and friday, I frantically painted the last five minis I needed to put on the board - three big Kurnoth Hunters with bows, a Branchwych, and a Branchwraith. I was up until 2am both night, I think. Friday in work was painful. On Saturday morning, I suddenly realised I had never painted the edges of the bases on any of my 40 flipping Dryads. That took half an hour of frantic work. Transporting the whole thing was not easy. My local GW is miles from any car park, so it took a 20-minute walk carrying the board and two large sportsbags with the miniatures in. I nearly died. Of course, when I got there several of the leaves clusters had broken off my Wyldwood, but the GW manager was kind enough to lend me some superglue to stick it back together. It took me so long to set everything up, the staff were taking the piss, saying I was setting up for 2019's competition. This is how it looked in the end - I didn't put all the dryads on. It might have swamped the board. There were quite a few entries - 14 in all. Quite a few were just plonked down on a shop-bought board with shop-bought scenery scattered around, which I thought was a slight shame. Only three or four of us had hand-made boards. One was great - a Blood Bowl stadium, which was quite nicely made, and had the genius idea of a smartphone incorperated as a stadium big-screen. A couple were really nicely painted, one guy had Idoneth Deepkin inside an actual goldfish bowl, one guy had just thrown money at the whole thing and bought a bunch of knights and a £300 Warhound Titan. The overall winner was a load of Imperial Guard and some rather lovely tanks, arranged on a cityscape made of GW buildings on a flat board. It was nicely done, if a bit unimaginative, but it was the highest board there, and often highest board wins AOP. My favorite was a quite small, understated but beautifully-done diorama, but the winner was certainly deserving. He had about eight or nine tanks, all meticulously painted, and about 50 guardsmen, so it must have been a hell of a lot of work. I didn't win any categories, but I did get second overall, which I'm very happy with and quite surprised by. I got a cool medal - I'm going for going for gold next year!

I didn't see the game. Who do you mean? Olly Stone?

Give me a pm when you do and maybe we could have a game of something. Anyway, did anyone else go down to their local Warhammer shop for Armies on Parade today? I've spent the last few weeks making a scenic board for my Sylvaneth treefellers, and I got second place overall out of 14 entries. I got a nice metal medal.

They've moved properties since 7 years ago. At that time they were in a sort of underground dungeon with a nice little jam-packed shop at the entrance, right? They moved into the big furniture warehouse at the end of the same street. I kid you not - a furniture warehouse. It's huge.

Firestorm Games are fantastic. I live 10 minutes drive from their huge brick and mortar store and gaming center*, so I'm not sure what their delivery reliability is like, but the prices are good, and the guys are all dedicated gamers and seem pretty efficient. *As a result, I might as well just divert my monthly wages straight to the store.

Firstly it was a left-foot shot, and secondly it appears from the (astonishingly annoying) commentary that the ref was a she, not a he. None of this helps with the central question of "what the fuck?"

I've got a tin of that army painter stuff. I don't dip anything in it - too messy. My preferred method when using it is to paint it on like a thick wash, then draw the dip away from a few areas you want to be lighter with a dryer brush. You have to be careful it doesn't pool, but it is very handy stuff. Don't use a brush you want to use again afterwards! I actually haven't used it for a year or two, but I did paint about 50 zombies with it and they came out great without any highlighting at all. You do have to paint your base colours brighter than you want them to be on the finished model to compensate for the dip dulling them down, and you have to spray them with a matte varnish like Dullcoat afterwards, but the results are great for the time spent, and the dip dries to a rock hard varnish that protects the models.

Just to point out, it's not that the second one is rubbish or anything, just that the first one is bloody excellent.