Mostly Empire, But I Still Play Warmahordes

Done.  For now.  

After a long(ish) break I got back to painting today.  More Empire, but some new models at least.  Before getting to the new, let's cover the old.  The horses got their finishing touches today, not that it really shows.  I did a search for horse hooves, which turned up no porn or other questionable material for a change, and found that they're black.  Unfortunately the hair is also black, so the hooves and forelocks blend into each other.  When it's time for the inevitable post-basing touch ups I'll see what I can do about the hooves, but ultimately they're so small I may just let it slide.  In the meantime I'll check out some examples for around the internets and see how others handle it.  In other horse news I went ahead with highlighting the barding, which produced no visible results as anticipated.  If anyone can pick out which one is the one with the highlights I'll go back and do the others, but since I know which one it is and can't tell any difference I don't think I'll be doing any more pointless silver highlights.

Can you have enough infantry?  I'm not sure you can.

While I was getting nowhere with the horses I started up on infantry again.  The main reason was to paint up my Halberdier basing tester, but it would have been silly to not get another batch of Spearmen going at the same time.  Turns out my regular ballast works fine with the extra short Empire shoes, so I'll be able to get going on sanding and varnishing the models I've painted thus far, plus I can do the same (minus the varnish of course) for all the models I've assembled but haven't primed yet.  I finally used the P3 mixing medium I've had for years to try thinning my reds, which tend to break up quickly when I thin with water.  The results were as welcome as they were unexpected.  When I thin my paints (with water) the change over from Way Too Thick to Runs Around Uncontrollably is thin and often impossible to find.  With the mixing medium the paint thinned out and coated evenly, and thinner than ever, without going straight to a watery mess that filled in any cracks it could reach.  I always wondered how the painters better than I (read: most painters) got their super thin paints to follow orders.  Turns out the answer was in my paint bucket the whole time.  This is something I'll look to play around with in the future when I'm not churning out rank and file Empire mans.

Hitting the gym like Hermoine.
Minus the Chicken Soup book of course.

Stuff that doesn't fit elsewhere time.  In the wake of this year's Nova Open there's been some soul searching among my Warmahordes group (the NoVa Nomads).  As a group our showing at our local "big" con was worse than last year and there's been plenty of discussion about why that is and what to do about it.  While I'd like to be a traveling tournamenteer it's not in the cards for the foreseeable future, so my role in all this is on the practice squad/scout team.  To that end I'm going to try and sharpen my game, and lists, for and during next year.  I won't be chasing the latest con winning list (in large part because Khador doesn't seem to win tournaments in the current meta), but I will try and focus more on casters and lists that are likely to show up on the big stages.  The plan now is to come up with three or four lists and stick with them, as much as possible, so that my locals can get reps in against the "top tier" Khador choices.  As an added benefit I should get better with whatever I settle on as well.  This means some deep cuts.  I won't be fooling around with Zerkova (unless I'm coddling a noob), won't be coming to grips with eButcher (despite the recent popularity of his Doomie spam tier list), and will probably be putting a halt to my newly rediscovered infatuation with the Ice Princess, pSorscha.  The short list so far is: eSorscha, pIrusk, Old Witch, pButcher, some flavor of Vlad.  While this list is 80% Iron Flesh casters, that's not by design, nor is it the primary reason any of them are on the list.  Both eSorscha and pButcher can put out a ton of damage on their feat turn (all the time in the case of Orsus), Old Witch is as good of a control caster as Khador has, pIrusk is an all-rounder with a special love for infantry (wonder if that works in Khador?), and Vlad needs no introduction.  Strakhov might be a dark horse as I think he has potential (which I may or may not be able to use effectively), but he's not a common player in the big leagues so he doesn't fit in with the plan so much.  I don't plan on making any special buys for this program, though anything I already plan on getting may show up, but at this point I have the bulk of the usual Khador choices (with the notable exceptions of Behemoth, Nyss Hunters, Fenris, and the Iron Fang Kovnik [who will be mine when I can lay hands on one/put in an online order]) so I don't think it will be an issue.  I have all the tools (read: models), now I'll have to figure out how to get the best use possible out of them.  The plan is to hammer out some lists, test them out in the remainder of 2013, then find a big rock to carve them in when the calendar flips.  Future releases (hello Butcher3!) may throw some unexpected ingredients into the mix, but I'll look to minimize their impact as much as possible.