Now With Title!

My latest endeavor.  

Fun fact: this is version three of this post.  The previous two were lost while trying to get the phone and tablet, and multiple apps on both, to play nice.  The future, it is not yet here.  This third iteration brought to you the old fashioned way, with a keyboard and mouse.  I had missed natural, effortless typing.  But I digress...

My lack of hobby progress over the past month or two has been unsettling.  Things are fine on the gaming side, but modelling and painting has slowed as much as possible without hitting a full stop.  The only sensible thing to do in this sort of situation is to add more models to the queue, which is exactly what I did thanks to Black Friday sales.  It took a while, but I finally pulled the trigger on Menoth.  I settled on a list of (what I consider) core choices, ran it past my locals, and finally gave Spikey Bits a shot.  Now I have many more mans waiting (and waiting) for some TLC.

Insert Knight Pun Here

Nearly there.  

My slowly growing Empire army is now on the cusp of having two units ready for action, the cannon from a while back and now a modest group of knights.  Both still require some final gluing and varnish, but all the painting is done.  The drive to look back at my work to find problems is irresistible, so it's no surprise that even as I was putting the finishing touches on I was regretting decisions I had made.  I tried to stick to the studio Reiksguard scheme, which meant red and/or white feathers.  I blocked these in with little forethought, and as things turned out every helm with a ribbon had a red feather on top of said ribbon, which meant those ribbons had to be white.  Since there's a ribbon on the banner pole, the banner had to be red.   In vacuum this wouldn't be a problem, but when the color of the lances (red) are factored in then you can see the issue.  A red banner precludes a red banner pole (it ended up black), which is a very small inconsistency that is unlikely to ever be noticed, but it'll rub a me for as long as I field the model.  There's also more red than white in the unit, but that will be addressed when the ranks swell.  Those small grumbles aside, I'm pleased with how the unit turned out.  Despite doing horse and rider armor in different ways, the results match up just fine.  I tried out using a wash to do some black lining between the helmet plumes with good results.  The champion's face came out particularly well, and the unit didn't spend an excessive amount of (work) time on the table despite being ~2.5 times larger than a standard halberdier.

Now I have a final hurdle to clear, and it's one I have no experience with.  The picture in this post makes the unit look basically finished, but it's still a collection of mounts, riders, and shields (where appropriate).  It's been so long since I've painted something before it was fully assembled that I might as well be doing it for the first time.  Ideally I'd like to put a coat of varnish on the riders and shields before assembling the whole model and applying the rest if the varnish.  I don't have a good idea for how to let the pieces dry without sticking it whatever they dry on and potentially leaving paint behind when I peel them off that surface.  I'll probably end up assembling the models before varnishing as it's the easiest way.  I'm also considering magnetizing horse and rider for potentially easier transport.  That may not be an issue though, and I'd very much like to have a unit well and truly finished.

Baby Stepping

Incremental advancement.

My grand plans for weekend painting pulled their usual disappearing act, but I did manage to get a little work in.  Considering how little painting I've done over the past couple weeks I'll take whatever I can get.  Last time I didn't quite finish the first layer of red so I remedied that first thing.  Next I did all the non-feather whites, then I finished up by putting down a green foundation on the laurels.  Not much overall, but every little bit.  Still outstanding are the feathers, standard, horn banner, green bits, and any forgotten details or cleanup.  The finish line is in sight.  Best of all, I stuck a rider on a horse to compare armor and found they match up just fine.

Trying New Things

Now with captions.  

Today's post is being produced entirely on my fancy new iPad.  We'll see how it works out.  So far no photo captioning or placement.  Not a great first impression.  Update: a few more steps, but looks workable.

After a longer than expected hiatus I again sat down at the painting table.  My ambition was only to knock the rust off, but I got some decent work in anyway.  Now I have a batch of Reiksguard with finished skin and armor, plus a start on red and white details.  There are some green details to be done and mouths to be finished, but that shouldn't take long.  Along the way I did a bad thing by changing how I did armor, so now I wonder if the knights and horses will match up.  Worst case scenario I redo the horse armor, which wouldn't be horrible, but I hope to not have to make that call.  With some luck I'll have the riders finished this weekend and shields soon after.  If the armor matches up then I'll just have to glue and varnish to have a painted, fieldable, and finished unit, which will be a nice little milestone.

Tomorrow is Foodmachine, my first "tournament" in a couple months.  It's a one or two list event, so I can pick a partner for the eVayl list I've been playing over the past few months.  Foodmachine isn't the best testing environment with the rampant and encouraged cheating, but it'll still be timed turns which will be a good exercise in speedier decision making.  I'm leaning towards Aby as a partner since her tier is like a well-worn jacket for me, but I love the idea of pairing prime and epic Vayl.  Also under consideration is eLylyth so I can east into running her in a "competitive" environment.  I have almost no practice with her though, maybe a half dozen games at most, and I don't really want to be the guy who brings a pair of big time tournament lists to a lighthearted charity event.  I don't have to decide for 12.5 hours or so, which is plenty of time to change and make up my mind a few times over.

One Foot at a Time

My most recent construction project.  

Been a while, eh?  You may have noticed that I tend to post when I've painted something.  Since I haven't sat down to paint in far too long, I also haven't sat down to blog in a while either.  That doesn't mean I've been idle, just occupied with things that aren't painting.  There's plenty of non-wargaming things that have taken up my attention (EV got married for one, hockey season for two, NHL14 for three), and there's been plenty of boxes being opened and models assembled as well.

I'm still working on eVayl and getting more comfortable with her and her tier list.  After 8-10 games played, a couple videos watched, and the much debated decision to kill my own mans for a turn one Shredder, things are starting to come together.  The Legionnaires are putting in more work (outside of simply feeding the pot) and I'm getting more lessers on the table in general, though people are starting to target the pot sooner as a result.  In recent games I've sent the Angels further up the table on turn one to make use of the tier SPD boost.  While this has cost me an Angel early on, which isn't so good, it also gets the Angels involved much earlier and puts some heat on my opponent from the very beginning.  This is true of the list in general as I've been running the Ravagores in turn one as well, plus trying to charge Vayl for the extra movement, all with an eye towards dictating the line of engagement instead of getting bottled up on my half of the table.  Vayl doesn't feel nearly as survivable in her epic form so it's been a learning process, but I hope I'm turning the corner on it.

Finally, there's the outstanding matter of the Empire.  The train has ground completely to a halt after a hard opening charge.  With EV due back from his honeymoon sometime soon, and our usual Tuesday game to resume after that, it looks like my grand plan to have a painted (starter) force ready to go is going to come up short.  I've been sniffing around it of late, notably to finally get a handle on Reiksguard schemes, so hopefully I get back on the horse soon.

Things Still Happen Here

Au revoir MP85.  

I wanted to start this post with hobby news, but that just isn't working.  Today I blog with a heavy heart because a tiny ball of French-Canadian exuberance is moving from swampy DC to sunny CA.  Sports games are also numbers games sometimes, and the crunch is rarely harsher than when the season is about to begin.  I could go on for quite a while, but ultimately this is a hobby blog and I probably shouldn't indulge in hockey talk when I haven't had hobby talk in quite a while.  I has a hockey sad, but the show must go on.

Judging by the lack of posting for the last two weeks, you might think there hasn't been much happening.  You'd be right for the most part, but there has been some action going on.  Unfortunately there are no pictures of said action because pictures aren't appropriate.  There was a lot of reading, be it forums or rules, leading up to jumping in on Infinity.  After far too much effort I laid hands on a Military Orders starter box, a grunt, and a handful of Knights.  I've done a modest amount of modelling with much more on deck for tomorrow so I can have a squad more or less ready for Tuesday. Lack of fluff is starting to become an issue now as I start considering schemes.  I'd like to read more than just the blurbs on the Infinity site, and play a couple games as well, before I commit to a particular Knightly Order (and therefore paint scheme).  Painting issues aside, I'm looking forward to getting some reps in with my chosen faction.  In Empire news I built some Archers and got basing underway on painted and unpainted Spearmen.  The painting muse has been on vacation lately, and since Empire is mostly a painting project at this point that means there hasn't been much progress there.  Still need to finish reading the WFB rules as well.

There's less smoke but more fire on the Warmahordes front.  After girding my loins for competitive Khador play previously, I got to thinking about the best way to help my fellow gamers prepare for tournament play.  The Motherland hasn't had the best showing on the big stages over the past year or two for whatever reason.  One possible reason: Legion takes all their places.  It turns out I have a bag full of Legion, stocked with the vast majority of what the Internet tells me are the best choices.  [The only big hole I have are Raptors which I can probably borrow from a local (or build my Uhlans and use them as proxies)].  With this in mind I started assembling eVayl and the non-Shredder lessers so I could run the now-standard tier 4 list.  My first time out with it didn't go so well, but I did learn the pMadrak can be tough to kill.  I learned a lot from the game, which felt like it hadn't happened in forever, and I have some ideas for next time.  Once I get the Knights together I'll be looking to the lingering Gatormen and Hex Hunters, plus digging around while hoping that I have another Legion heavy kit hiding somewhere.  

Stay on Target

The ranks continue to swell.  

We'll get to the title in a bit.  First up is painting, which right now means Empire.  I've had a productive couple days at the painting table, pushing ever further down the road to a fieldable, and painted, Empire army.  The picture to the left is the combined result of two sessions, hence the two obvious halves.  The total haul is thus: six based Spearmen, ten unbased Spearmen, five based horses, one based Warrior Priest, one based Halberdier, and three based cannon crew.  I'm drawing ever closer to the (800 point) finish line and it's very tempting to put basing on hold to push through on the remaining ranks of unpainted Spearmen (and quintet of Knights), but if I'm making the effort to get everything painted before taking the army to battle then I'm not going to cheat on the basing.  It slots in well enough while painting and the brown bases look a lot better than the sloppy black/red/white/blue ones.  I told EV that he could expect a game of WFB when he sees a finished unit of Spearmen appear, so the plan now is to get bases done while finishing the unit.  I've set an internal target of EV's impending wedding about a month and a half from now, which is far enough out to be realistic but close enough to stave off complacency and wandering eye.  More on that later.

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.

More of You Know What

Stuff that got painted.  

I find it amusing that I'm now writing my seventh consecutive post for a game I have yet to play.  It's what passes for news around here though so I'm gonna stick with it.  I had a very nice and relaxing Labor Day loooooong weekend which contained a bit of painting but not too much.  Still haven't made my way back to the idealized painting production line, but at least I'm crossing things off.  Once I get into the Spearmen in earnest the wheels should roll along with nary a bump.

Yep, More Empire

The box of finished minis.  

Trucking right along with this new venture.  It's a nice change of pace to see finished models (except for the bases, but more on that later) pile up with relative quickness.  I didn't quite hit the goal I set last time as the wizard isn't finished (I barely touched him in fact), but the Spearmen and cannon are all done so I'll call that close enough for victory.  The Spearmen have yellow tassels on their spears which doesn't show up too well in the picture.  They did come out a bit dark as individuals, but I'm hoping that when I get a couple ranks together they'll have more pop.  I'm also not sold on the feathers.  Most of the studio models I've been looking at have a second color at the end, either red or black.  You can see that I skipped this step, but now the feathers look bland and I'm considering going back to give them some zazz.  Hopefully they'll get the same rank bonus that the tassels get, but if not adding that extra accent should be quick and painless.

Yet More Empire

The Halberdiers have been done for a day or two.  

My assembly line approach has skipped a beat.  After finishing the first block of 20 Halberdiers I took a break from infantry to do a cannon.  Then I started on more infantry, this time Spearmen, as I continued working on the cannon.  Today I messed the whole thing up by introducing a wizard.  According to the rotating infantry method, discussed here, the cannon should be finished (from the previous session), the first group of Spearmen should be done, and there should be a second group of something (likely more Spearmen) that had been basecoated and washed.  Instead I have what you see to the left: a finished cannon crew, a mostly finished cannon, some almost finished Spearmen, and an unwashed wizard.  To be fair there are only parts of the wizard, skin and metal, that should be washed as I'll be washing the blues after layering up a bit.  There are two shades of blue that don't really come through in the picture.  The cloak and cuffs are a dark blue, while the inner robes are a lighter grey blue.  The wizard's globe is an unknown at the moment.  I wouldn't mind a starry night crystal ball look but have no idea how I'd pull it off.  Fortunately the internet is awash with painted minis.  While the model is a Celestial wizard, I'm not locked in on a lore just yet.  Heavens does look interesting, but the choice of model was strictly based on what I had primed and ready to paint.  My options were a Light wizard (used as a painting guinea pig here, since stripped back to an incredibly resilient) and the one I picked.  The plan now is to finish everything pictured above next time and get another batch of Spearmen going or maybe do some horses.

Assemble the Empire

Can't hold a candle to De-loused in the Comatorium.  

Just so we're all clear, the title of this post was an excuse to link to the song of the same name by Sparta, the (subjectively) less talented and (objectively) less successful remnant of At the Drive-In (The Mars Volta being the more talented and successful part for those playing at home).

Also note that I wrote the bulk of this post about a week ago.  I indulged in a far too rare proofread so there shouldn't be any linguistic train wrecks, but in case any slipped past the second pass I blame time and monkeys.

Now we can proceed.

More Empire

Kinda dark.  It happens.  

I fought through a bout of standard malaise yesterday to get in some decent painting progress.  The remaining  (ready to paint) Halberdiers and their standard got the full treatment, while a cannon and crew started their own journey.  I'm debating changing up the reds and/or blues on the cannon.  On the one hand it'd be awfully boring, both to paint and to look at, if all the reds and blues are the same throughout the army.  The other hand says it'd be good to have a cohesive army, especially since the current idea is a professional, organized, homogeneous Altdorf army (with the possibility of a different scheme for the Greatswords and maybe a unit of knights).  I'll probably go with different shades throughout the army while staying uniform within each unit, but it's something to consider.

Building Blocks

Looks nice even if the bases are distracting.  

Despite the lack of updates I've made good progress over the past few days.  My first block of troops is done (except for basing and varnish), which gives me a nice visual treat to look at.  The unit came together quickly thanks to the reasons I mentioned last time, but also because of the approach I took to painting them.  My usual approach is to take a model or group from start to finish before taking up another set.  There's a natural pause in my painting when I (very generously) wash the whole model, which takes a while to dry.  Ideally I'll let the wash dry overnight, but often I take a short break instead so I can push on to the finish line.  This time I decided to embrace the overnight drying time by adding a second group of models.  When I sat down to finish off the first group of six after their wash, I also base coated another group of seven since I already had the colors out on my palette.  When I finished the first six I had also finished base coating the second seven, which I then washed and left to dry overnight.  The process repeated with another new group of seven with a final result of twenty newly (re)painted Halberdiers, which is the size I've tabbed for detachments.  Whether these brave mans of the Empire are complete as a detachment for a larger regiment or are the core of a central block of Halberdiers is still under debate.  Said debate is largely pointless as they can be both, if not at the same time, and I have plenty more bodies waiting to be assembled to fill out the ranks.  There's another three on the painting table now, along with a bannerman, and I put together four more a few days ago.  The three plus banner didn't make it to the wash stage because I wanted to take some extra time with the banner, but also because my brush was suffering from the extending painting time.  If I want to keep this new version of the assembly line I'll either need to rinse my brush, and re-thin my paints, more often or work on smaller groups.  If I stuck to a more standard group of ten I could have five being finished and another five being started, with less brush abuse and more room on the painting table.  Turns out working on fourteen models at once (on pill bottle lids) takes up a lot of real estate.  I'm thinking about rolling into Spearmen after I finish the straggling Halberdiers, though I may take up a cannon instead to break up the long line of infantry.  There's also the bits that didn't quite get finished for the Journeyman league that I should get done.

Something New(ish)

Two sessions worth, which is a couple hours.  

We're going way out of order, not that you'll notice the difference, but the iron is hot so I'm pounding it.  Halberdiers are the new hotness around here and I'm having a hard time with them.  Not in the usual manner where I don't want to paint them, can't figure up a scheme I like, or can't implement the scheme once I decide on it.  Instead the "hard time" revolves around trying to maintain a reasonable pace and not binge on painting gobs of the blighters.  Hopefully this way I can keep up the painting steam to plow through the models without overheating and ruining the boiler.  I have about 25 models assembled (more or less, details to come), primed, and in various stages of existing paint that are ready to go.  Starting yesterday I've finished 6 and have another 7 base coated and washed.  That's a very fast pace for me even taking my recent speed boost into consideration.

Something Other Than Finished Painting

Everything in my bag that isn't painted.  

Still about painting, just not finished minis.  After the informal listing of unpainted minis in my last post I decided to dig out the models and get a look at them as a group.  The results were better than expected and pictured to the left.  It's worth noting that this is only what was in my bag (except the mortar) so it doesn't include what was on the painting table at the time (eEryiss, Beast 09, eButcher) nor does it include the stuff that isn't completely built yet (the other two mechanics, IFP, all the horsemans, Spriggan, Conquest).  Despite those caveats, I'm basically down to three units (Great Bears, Mechanics, Mortar [which still needs the telescope]), three large bases (Drago, Drakhun, Beast 09), two medium bases (dismounted Drakhun, eButch), and two small bases (Yuri, eEryiss).  This is not much to finish and while it's not reasonable to think I can get them all done (and played) before the Journeyman league ends next Sunday (maybe Saturday) it's more reasonable to think that I could get all that painted by the end of the year.

Something a little different

     I keep meaning to do a weekend-of-disappointment recap, but haven't quite mustered the drive for it yet.  I got out the camera intending to take a picture of my LPC group as it stands (perhaps 35% complete).  Instead I fished a wizard out of the Simple Green vat to see how it looked.  I was surprised in a couple of ways.  Initially I thought the plastic had started to melt, but it turns out that was just the paint waiting to slide off with a nudge.  Or so it seemed at first...

Done, but not done done

     I think I'm calling the first three assault marines done, or at least almost done.  I still have to do the eyes, which I managed to forget, and chapter badge transfers.  And bits-n-bobs.  And jump packs.  But that aside, they're close enough to done that I'm going to start working on the next batch.  I've been very happy with the results, I just wish I could get them done faster.  I actually had a very nice moment earlier today while trolling some forum, looking at someone's minis and thinking "Man, I just want to be able to produce something like that."  When I kept looking, noticing details and approaches and whatnot, I realized that I had produced models just like the ones I was looking at.  I guess you're so familiar with the flaws in your own work that it's hard to see past them at times.  On to the pictures.

Break radio silence

Painting progress has been in short supply lately, hence the lack of posts.  What I have been doing this week is looking into Empire stuff, but more on that later.  I got the paints out yesterday and put in some more work on the Blood Angels.  The minis are getting into that perilous. almost-finished stage where I start to worry about messing up what I've done so far, but I'm attempting to forge on anyway.  I did the green and base coated the silver.