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The first of many updates on the progress of painting everything for Armies on Parade.

I finally managed to get hold of a can of Zandri Dust spray, so I was able to finish the base colour of the board. Everything was sprayed lightly from above, leaving the grey showing in recessed and in random areas of the walls and roads. The important thing was to make sure it wasn’t uniform, for a more natural appearance.

As luck would have it, the sun was setting as I took a picture of my progress, giving me this shot of the building glowing in the sunlight:

From the other side, things looked a lot more washed out:

The marines started to get their base coats and initial airbrush highlights.

At first I wasn’t too happy with how things were looking, but after sleeping on things, and adding in a few more highlights to the characters, and spots of other colours, I’ve come around to how they look.

I’ll be giving them an all over wash of black ink, to give more shading, contrast, and richness to the colour. That should help a lot, even before I add the remaining “main” colours.

Over the weekend I plan to build the remaining marines (5 Intercessors, plus 5 Hellblasters), and the Dreadnought. If I can get the black armour finished on everything in the next few days, it frees me up to concentrate on other details and finishing the board.

Only 36 days to go!

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I got an email from BA about this, first thing this morning, but per The Guardian:

British Airways is investigating the theft of customer data from its website and app over a two-week period and has urged customers affected to contact their banks or credit card providers.

The airline said around 380,000 payment cards had been compromised and it had notified the police.

In a statement it said: “The stolen data did not include travel or passport details. From 22.58 BST August 21 2018 until 21.45 BST September 5 2018 inclusive, the personal and financial details of customers making bookings on ba.com and the airline’s app were compromised. The breach has been resolved and our website is working normally.

I’m waiting to hear back from my bank, but I’m a little annoyed that this was the extent of the information BA provided:

Dear Customer,

From 22:58 BST 21 August 2018 until 21:45 BST 5 September 2018 inclusive, the personal and financial details of customers making or changing bookings at ba.com, and on our app were compromised. The stolen data did not include travel or passport information.

The breach has been resolved and our website is working normally.

We’re deeply sorry, but you may have been affected. We recommend that you contact your bank or credit card provider and follow their recommended advice.

We take the protection of your personal information very seriously. Please accept our deepest apologies for the worry and inconvenience that this criminal activity has caused.

Further information can be found at ba.com.

Pretty much just “we’re sorry this happened, and you should contact your bank” but without any helpful advice on what to say to the bank, or even which department is best to speak to. Fraud? Card Services? General Customer Services? Banks aren’t known for their stellar customer service at the best of times, so dumping the responsibility of assuring potentially stressed out customers on what to do next onto the banks seems like an epic case of “slopey shoulders” from BA.

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Krebs on Security recently wrote about investigations into the wave of extortion spam doing the rounds. As chance would have it, I recently started receiving these emails myself. I’ve had three, so far, over the last week or so. All from the same @yahoo.jp email address (obviously not the real origin), and all with slight variations on the same message, and a unique Bitcoin wallet each time. For example:

These are the first few mail systems used by the most recent message, before the message reaches my own setup:

Interesting things to note:

  • The password given must be from the Tesco data breach – I remember that one as their sign-up form cut off part of the password I had typed in – I don’t remember being a Tesco Bank customer, but I have used their online grocery store, and I assume it’s all the same login system.
  • The amount they want paid has decreased over time – it started at $3000, the most recent email is $1000
  • Similarly, the number of friends they threaten to send their “recording” to has gone from 9 to 5. Perhaps the scammer is testing at what “level” they get the most returns?
  • The English is good, but not quite native-speaker level.

Given I already know this is a scam (and I don’t even have a webcam attached to my PC, for another thing… ?), I’m not exactly a prime “mark” for this. But I can easily see how some less clued-up person could be scared into handing over their savings.

[Addendum] – as I’ve been writing this, a fourth email has arrived. Same sender, same basic message, but this time asking for $5000, and threatening to send to 14 friends.

Update:- I added some of the mail headers to the post, for a bit more information.

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An important milestone has been reached in my Armies on Parade entry – the majority of board construction is finished, and painting has begun! It’s still only a few layers of paint, but every bit counts when there’s only 39 days to go!

I primed the main building separate from the rest of the board, so I could reach tricky areas easier. I then glued it to the board.

As the Sector Imperialis boards have a tonne of moulded detail, I had to find a way of hiding gaps between the walls and the ground. This was done using a combination of Polyfilla, textured paste, and various grits of sand and gravel. I managed to enlist a couple of small helpers with this, asking them to take some of the grit and (literally) throw it around the building — something which they quite enjoyed!

Once this initial layer was dry, I added some larger dollops of filler, and pressed a variety of objects into them: leftover floor sections, pieces clipped from spare wall sections, plastic H-beams, and a number of skulls. These then received the same shower of grits. These represent piles of larger rubble which have been pushed out of the way to make the building somewhat usable as shelter or storage.

The next morning, once the filler had dried overnight, all of the grit was covered in Terrain Fixer and left to dry for a couple of hours. Then, it was on to priming! The pictures below show the board from all sides, so you can see the details.

Yes, I intend to fix that gap…

Priming the rest of the board finished off the can of Chaos Black I’d started with the main building. With the undercoat dry, I started the first layer, based on Peachy’s Kill Team board recipe, by spraying everything Mechanicus Standard Grey. Oddly, this only took about a third of a can.

With the main board making progress, it was time to move on to the other elements. the barrels, crates, and barricades all received a coat of Mechanicus Standard Grey, apart from two of the barrels which were sprayed Corax White.

But an Armies on Parade board needs an army, doesn’t it? I finished assembling the first Inceptor squad, before priming them along with the Lieutenant and Ancient I’d previously made. The shoulder pads and helmets are separate for now, as they’ll be primed a lighter colour.

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I’ve finally filled in the missing corner. Everything has been cut, glued, clamped, and filled… I’ve just got to sand everything down to size.

Last, but not least, the main building feature is 99% complete. I might add a couple more bits of broken columns, and there’ll be some rubble added to the floor on the board, but otherwise its ready for the next stage.

It’s bigger than I realised during assembly, running nearly the full width of the board, even when set at a diagonal. It’s almost amazing how the scale seems to change as soon as it’s placed on the board. Suddenly it becomes this huge, looming, monster towering over the battlefield.

I’ll be adding rubble and scatter terrain to break up the rest of the board, and make it look more “lived in”. Everything will be integrated using texture paint and extra grit and sand for variation. That’s the next task.

44 days to go.

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I’ve been slowly chipping away at my Armies on Parade board over the last few days (when I’ve resisted the siren song of Warcraft…). The army itself is another matter, but that’s for another day.

Basic construction of the base has been finished, apart from that one empty corner. I’ve got a couple of ideas of how to fill it, I just haven’t settled on an option yet.

I started off by gluing the section cut from the Realm of Battle board to the plywood, and clamping everything together. Once the glue dried, I covered the sides and holes in the board with a hefty amount of Polyfilla.

After leaving everything overnight to cure, I used an electric sander to smooth everything off and trim off the excess plastic. A new floor for the main building area was created out of textured plasticard.

Time to check everything would fit into the case, and to see how tall I could make the buildings. It turned out I had 11.5 inches in height I could use, which was plenty. The new Sector Imperialis buildings are ~5 inches per level, so I could comfortably fit a two-story building into the case.

Now it’s on to the fun stuff – the buildings! I started by laying out a rough floor-plan, to see how many sections I needed per side. I ended up not using all of the sections on the left side.

With two sides built, things are starting to take shape. I removed the door built into one of the wall sections, to give another “access point” to the building.

Here I’m test fitting the upper floor, to make sure everything is square. As I’d been using a spare floor section to try line-up the wall sections throughout, things were pretty good.

By this point I was starting to think about the walls on the upper floor, but it was time to pack everything away for the night. Shortly after taking this picture, I realised I had to rip the column tops from the right-side wall as I remembered I was going to extend the floor out that way.

This is the mess from just from scraping off mould-lines in one sitting. Time to get the vacuum out…

My plan is to finish construction of the buildings and ruins this evening. Providing I get the missing corner filled with something, I might manage to get the first layers of paint on the board by the start of next week. I really need to get the board finished soon, so I can move on to painting the army. There are only 45 days to go until Parade Day!

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I’ve been granted some WoW in-game time as a resolution to an old support ticket, so I’m able to jump onto my higher-level characters again. I’m comparing the experience to the one I had with the new character I started earlier, and… hooo-boy the experience on my 110 Paladin was confusing. I stopped playing pretty early in Legion’s lifecycle, so when I logged in I was prompted to do the Legionfall scenario straight away, then after 1 quest or so, I was immediately whisked off to start Argus. While I’m on my way to Argus, I’m prompted to start the Siege of Lordaeron, leaving me wondering what content is actually worth playing through. Playing the Siege would net me a shiny new weapon, but no way to follow up on that storyline until I drop ÂŁ40-ÂŁ53 on Battle for Azeroth.

On top of the questing confusion, all my talents were reset and my abilities changed. These were expected, but it adds to the sense of unfamiliarity. I’m not a fan of the GCD change and how it affects Paladin rotation, but that might just be a symptom of generally feeling lost. Right now I feel like I’m just mashing random buttons whenever I get in combat, in the hope something fires off.  On a character I’ve played on-and-off for 11ish years, feeling lost is very uncomfortable and frustrating!

I guess I’m in an odd position in that I’m coming back after a new expansion is released, but I haven’t unlocked the new content yet. In general the experience seems to be that while new characters get guided to where they need to be, returning characters need to figure out for themselves what they’re meant to be playing through, with the implication that you will just drop anything “old” from your Quest Log immediately. But there’s nothing to tell you in-game what is out-dated. In my case, for this character, the path forward is pretty much “buy BFA and forget about anything Legion-related,” but if I’d been returning at some point around the pre-patch, with no clue as to what had been released since I stopped playing, I would have been completely disorientated.

Maybe I’ll just stick with a new character for now…