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.