Victory

A finished group.

 At long last, it's been a good 24 hours in my neck of the woods.  First up, the IABN machinery should be running.  Again, this will be a shot across the bow type thing.  I have a podcast post in mind for when I'm sure everything is working.

Next up, you can already see my handiwork from yesterday.  The current, though I should now say past, batch is finished (except varnishing and snow).  I got out of bed determined to get a good day of painting in and ended up getting the whole thing done, which was a pleasant surprise.  Once I sat down to do it, there wasn't really much left.  Leather, rivets/medals/doohickeys, touch-ups, basing, and it was over before I knew it.

Ready for kommanding.

Irusk got some extra red trim on his tabard/loincloth, which I think helps to tie the top and the bottom of the model together.  I'm fairly pleased with how he turned out.  A lot of my previous casters have felt like they ended up too red for my scheme, but Irusk hits closer to the predominantly green with red accents look that I'm going for.  He was straightforward to paint, with plenty of sharp corners and obvious definitions.  Since most of the painting is edge highlighting, the creases make the technique work better than a more flowing, organic sculpt.  All the hard lines are fitting for a (soon to be Supreme) Kommandant.  My thinking about how Irusk works on the table has changed a bit since he hit the painting dry dock.  The last game I played with him was the first time I noticed he had a ROF 2 gun, a gun that also has a decent RNG and POW to boot.  While I still plan to approach him as an infantry based attrition machine, I've been trying to fit Reinholdt into a list (never used him before) with an eye towards looking for a ranged assassination.  There will be plenty of pieces around to clear lanes and open up shots, plus after having looked at the Steamroller 2011 pack I realize I need to have a viable assassination option in lists even if that isn't their primary aim.

Two words is all she needs: bob, weave.

The rest of the group turned out well enough.  The Rocketeers got the short end of the stick this time.  It's not that I wasn't pay attention with them or not trying to paint them well, but I did start to feel a time crunch at the end, plus they were the models that suffered the wrath of my rustiness following Thanksgiving.  The Officer turned out nice enough, and it will be interesting to see how the whole unit looks painted up and spread across the table.  The standard in particular should jump out at people.  The painting process drained my confidence in the durability of the piece, and while I don't think the flag will snap off any time soon I can see a time, none too distant, when I'll be pinning the flag back into place.  This is a lesson I've kept in mind during my initial forays into assembling eIrusk, who has an even larger flag to contend with.  That's a model that is going to take some consideration, so it will probably be longer than I'd like before I see what he can do.  The MoW options with him are intriguing, perhaps more so than the pButcher tier list I've so eager to play, and eIrusk looks like even more of a toolbox than pIrusk (if such a thing is possible), though I will miss Iron Flesh.  Then again, MoWs don't live or die by Iron Flesh quite as much as Winter Guard do.

Only one word for him: grapeshot.

The Winter Guard is on the verge of being fully painted.  While the unit itself, plus all its attachments, are complete, I still have one model to paint before I can call the unit finished.  The man, the beard, the legend, Kovnik Joe.  Technically he's not a part of the unit, just a solo that hangs out close by, but he puts the ram in the WGI's ramalamadingdong.  One day he'll put that same ram to work for the Winter Guard Rifle Corps, and perhaps a Field Gun, but those are developments that are far down the pipe.  In the present, my (current) Irusk tournament list is a bit closer to being painted.  With 17 of 35 models painted I'm not exactly close, and I won't get any closer before the tournament (with the possible exception of the War Dog, who has a good start on him already), but I'm as close to halfway through it as possible without actually being there.  Even if I hadn't come up empty on drive this last week or so I still wouldn't have finished painting it by next weekend, but I could have taken another little chunk out of the list.  At least I learned my lesson about getting painting done: if you need to paint, don't cart of book around with you, even if it's one you don't particularly like and are reading just to finish it so you can move on to another one.  Books, including crappy ones, have a certain gravity to them that will suck you in if you're not careful.

Ready to Rocketeer.

Last, but not least, the weather did break a bit this morning.  While it's hovering just above freezing here, the humidity is down below 60%, so I took full advantage of my opportunity.  The painted stuff has a first coat of gloss varnish on it, and I primed up all the stuff I wanted to get done earlier this week.  Last night I was preparing alternate lists to play against EV today, lists that had neither WGI nor Kayazys.  While I came up with some ideas that I think could work decently, now I'll have (nearly) the full breadth of my collection to draw from.  Stealthy Strakhov list?  Hordey Irusk list?  Jacky Harkevich list?  Speedy Vlad?  Choppy Butcher?  Freezey Sorscha?  All possible.