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Hi all, Sorry for the delay, I've been rather absent over the last month or so. It doesn't help that I haven't logged into BM on my 'phone so quite often I'm checking the forum in the form of a ghost... Last year has been a bit of a mixed bag of stuff, with quite a lot of figures but less than I thought overall as there are several new unfinished projects for the shelf of doom. In January I caved to peer pressure and did a bit on my Dune diorama by painting up this Cthulhu Wars monster as a sandworm. It's a hard vinyl figure with nice detail but the seams are always a pain to clean up as you have to pare them down with an ultra-sharp blade rather than scraping. The start of the year was rather taken up with organising and marketing our Scale Models Expo again, but I got these skeletons finished by the end of February I think: They're pretty fun - fiddly to build but I enjoyed the painting although as ever the details seemed to go on forever. Here are a few close-ups: I made my daughter a custom Nerf gun in March so she could dress up as a zombie hunter at our local comic-and-stuff show - she has an ID and some zombie samples which I think I did the year before? The week before Scale Models Expo I had time to put two of these ships together in about 48 hours. I broke the other one slightly and it needs a repair and dusting so it never got photographed. They're more Bandai 1/1000 Space Battleship Yamato 2199 kits. Like everything Leiji Matsumoto does they're really pretty. May and June saw some experimental Necrons which I think came out really well. I finally seem to have made my peace with lighting effects on minis The Immortals above were pretty quick to do, the Wraiths below took a lot longer: They look pretty cool together and I really should paint some more, but then Soul Wars came out and distracted me pretty badly... At the end of June I also did another Nerf gun for L's birthday, which was a super-quick two day job in terrible weather. Not my best work but it's not terrible and she was really happy. I did a presentation box with satin lining and custom foam, using the graphics from the Photoshop image. July was mostly building Soul Wars figures, and I managed to paint some test ghosts: Since there were duplicates I did some simple conversions like this Chainrasp who has an empty hand instead of a weapon - he looks like he's going to fetch someone such a slap! I painted one of the Endless Spells at the same time - a Suffocating Gravetide, which was really fun. There was a bit of a gap in finished projects then (see below) but at the end of September I had a great time making a couple of Hotwheels/Matchbox cars into wargaming pieces for a game called Gaslands: I want to do some more, but stripping the paint is quite annoying. In October I got talked into entering Armies on Parade again and painted more ghosts (all in a week!) this guy isn't really finished yet but he's quite close... Since it was Armies on Parade I had to make a display board, which had to happen in five very busy days. Just made it in the end: My daughter got involved too and painted several Tau to add to her existing Pathfinder figure: After that madness I went into a bit of a decline (plus it's videogame release season!) but managed to finish last year's Pteras for our club competition. I even did a little bit of extra work on it in December to fix some things I didn't like. I was rather pleased with the figure, who came out quite well for 1/72. And that's the lot. Except it isn't quite, because at the start of the year I finished off this beast I've not been talking about it/showing it since it's supposed to be for a book, but I haven't heard anything from them for a year so I reckon I can get away with posting a pic or two here: I was expecting great things having built the excellent Viper, but this is a different beast altogether. Soft detail, bad mastering, some very good fit and some bad. I ended up doing an awful lot of work including a scratch interior and cockpit louvres plus the lighting stuff. Still, it's a very big model and not terribly expensive, and it's much better than not having a studio scale Raider kit I also had a couple of good works-in-progress which I need to pick up again: All in all not a bad year. I need to dust the Raider and take some proper pictures of it really as I've made a very fancy Perspex stand which looks pretty cool. It's just so stupidly big that it's hard to photograph. Cheers, Will

Hi folks, I thought I was going to end up with loads of builds this year, but there are a few languishing in the so-close-to-complete section which aren't going to contribute to the final score. Still, I'm pretty happy with this lot, especially those that were built under the auspices of one group build or another. Click the pictures for the Flickr galleries, I'll see if I can edit in the build threads later. Academy CV9040B in 1/35, built for the Swedish Military Group Build. Lots of masking fun! Bandai EFSF Salamis class light cruiser in 1/1700. A quick but fun build with LEDs for the bridge and engines. Tamiya's Yamaha YZ250 in 1/6 for the Motorcycle GB. My joint favourite model this year, I still haven't managed to take a good set of pictures of it though. Tamiya F-117A Nighthawk in 1/48 with Eduard etch (just the Zoom, I think). Part of Operation Be Less Afraid of Planes. Soda Pop Miniatures Super Dungeon Explore figures - non scale. Fun to paint, they're very different from the GW style. Industria Mechanika Drone Sniper in 1/6. My first resin kit, with some modifications (mainly to the gun) and additions. My other favourite, I really enjoyed decalling this one and building the base. Games Workshop's Warmaster Araby Guard figures in 12mm-ish scale. Not reet big. Games Workshop's Dark Vengeance Terminator figures in 28mm-ish scale. These were *way* more fiddly than I expected, but I really like them - there are five altogether in the squad.: Italeri Westland Wessex HU.5 in 1/48, for the Helicopter II group build although I didn't get it done in time. Thanks for all the support and advice, particularly to Colin who really inspired me to try and do a proper job of this one despite the kit's shortcomings. In the "almost there" category, I finished Trumpeter's very nice Tupolev Tu-160 but I haven't taken any proper pictures yet since the base still isn't 100% done. I also got quite a long with with this LCAC for the 1/144 scale group build, but it needs weathering and some other stuff finishing off. Hopefully it might make it into the yearbook before the 1st of January. Last-minute entry: This was a super-quick two week build at least a month ago, but I've been lazy about the base. The latter is still not really done, but I wanted to get some pictures of the plane before the end of the year. Cheers and thanks for looking! Will