A beginning...

So, where to start such an endeavour as this?

I suppose a statement of intent would be a good first step.

My "plan", such as it is, is to use this as a tool to track my general hobby progress. We're specifically talking Warhammer 40k and possibly some other game systems as time progresses (my Dindrenzi fleet is probably more 'complete' than any of my 40k armies...).

I'm thinking that this will be helpful to me for a few reasons:

1) I'm really, really slow at painting things. Not necessarily the act of painting itself but more just getting around to it in the first place. Hopefully this will serve as a driver to just get things done so I can show them off to the world - not that my work will be world class! But that's not the point, it's just about getting things complete.

2) Very soon, I'll be moving to another country and it will become a bit harder to get in games with my regular opponent! This should allow us to maintain some friendly competition in another way - painting challenges. He has at least as many unfinished miniatures as I do so we would both benefit greatly from regular progress goals!

3) I've been playing 40k and collecting GW miniatures (admittedly on-and-off) since I was a wee lad. At one point I quit the hobby outright because all of the guys I was playing with had done the same. I sold my miniatures off, got rid of my 2nd edition codex books and collection of ancient 80's era White Dwarf mags... and have regretted it ever since. This will serve as something of a permanent record/reference of all the work I've put into these things - perhaps it will prevent me from making such a mistake a second time!

I'm not really sure how regular updates will be for the moment. My next post will be all about my trip to Warhammer World for the Forge World open day last weekend. From there, I think I'd like to catalogue my Imperial Guard (and possibly Tyranids) army by unit. I imagine that this will serve as a good record of how things were at the start of this project. It should (unless I fail...) be very interesting to compare the army to it's old self in a years time.

As it stands I have about 5,000 points of IG all fully assembled and primed but with very little of it actually painted to completion. In fact, I can count the complete units on one hand and, while I really like the overall theme, I'm not quite happy with some of the details on those units. Tyranids come in at about 3,000 points... also mostly unfinished, but they aren't the priority.

It's a pretty big backlog to get through but that's one reason that I'm doing this...

I've ended up in this situation mostly because I really, really love building miniatures... almost all of my IG units have minor conversions or customisations. That's probably my favourite part of the hobby. I do enjoy playing the games but painting has always been less of a concern. In the past I've kind of considered a unit to be complete once it was built and primed but I'm trying to get away from that attitude. I do have a dream of someday having a fully painted army!

Oh, and the name... well, secretly I'm a Tau sympathiser... there's a Tau army in there somewhere too. They actually ARE fully painted, shockingly, but they are very old now and need a major revamp before any human can again lay eyes upon them.

I think that's enough ramblings from me... for now.