October Commitment Finished

Today I finally managed to get the last two things that I needed to finish off the squad: stable weather for spraying varnish and PVA glue for basing!

Final results below:

1st Squad, 7th Platoon taking aim!

In the grim darkness of the far future, there is only pointing.

All of my officers and veterans use Maxmini head swaps, so expect to see many more.

Some standard troopers on the firing line.

For November I'll be trying to get through either a vendetta gunship (roughly half painted already) or a few characters that I doubt will ever see much use on the field (Commissar, Priest etc.). I haven't decided which yet. I've been making slow progress on my 'teach myself weathering techniques' side-project this month and I'd like to get it finished before I tackle any other vehicles. So, finishing that little project will be first priority - once that's done I'll see what I have time left for in November!

October Update

Just a quick progress update - this months commitment has gone well, the squad is fully painted now and the next step is decals.

So this is what a painted squad looks like...

In the past I've always just used water when working with decals but having seen some examples online, I'm going to try to find a proper decal solvent/setting solution today. Even in my amateur hands it should allow me to eliminate the transparent film that water alone leaves visible. I'm not sure where to find this but I'm going to take a trip to Dark Sphere for some other bits and pieces anyway, so hopefully they have something. If not, there are bound to be a few scale model shops in London! Assuming I find something, I'll have these guys totally finished by next weekend which will be right on track.

I finally got around to building some Ikea display cabinets too, so everything is now deployed in my sitting room... here's how much stuff I have to paint:

Tyranids not pictured...

Sigh. At least I'm on the right track now! One squad almost done... only another 60 dudes to go, give or take. I can't help myself really, I'm also building another two tanks - after that I still have another Tauros and a Salamander Scout to build... then I'm done... until that infantry platoon I bought via a Kickstarter arrives D:

Let's start again, for reals this time... October painting commitment!

Right, forget that last post because I finally did manage to get my gear moved over to my new home, which means...

Hobby commitment for October!

So, my overall plan is to participate in a year-long hobby progress challenge for 2014, which will be for 1850 points, I think.

In order to prepare for that, I'm going to paint a unit each month for the remainder of 2013. This is also good because it will allow me to finish off the units that are already in progress and start (more or less) with a totally unpainted 1850 for the challenge.

This month, my goal will be to complete an infantry squad:

These poor guys have been 'uniform gray' for far too long...

And when I say complete, I mean totally finished... fully painted, decals done, bases decorated and varnished - ready to hit the table. This is almost unheard of for me, having even one squad totally finished would be a big win... all the more so if it gets me into the swing of things so I can complete the challenge! A fully painted army would be a big achievement, I don't think I've had one in about... oh, when did the Tau first come out? 2001 or something like that? Yeah... then. Given that I now have thousands of points of IG and almost as many Tyranids... I really need to paint some dudes.

You may notice that a couple of these guys are actually already painted - I did these several months ago as the test pieces for the whole army... I then proceeded to not paint the rest of the army, but that ends this month!

Behold! The entirety of my painted infantry!

Overall the scheme is quite drab and a bit grim-dark but fairly realistic, I think. I have the Forge World Elysian decals ready to go, which should liven them up just a little. My original idea had them with gold visors but it didn't really work. I can thank Starship Troopers for the core colour scheme concept. I should maybe have gone with desert bases for contrast but I wanted to maintain a kind of ruined urban wasteland feel to the army - a few tufts of grass will be added and some models have green crystals sprouting from the base, which is pretty cool. As I proceed with painting the other seventy million dudes I'm sure I'll come up with new ideas and hopefully learn how to paint human skin...

Each more gray than the last.

I've already proceeded beyond the image above and will probably post the next update once the full 10 man squad is painted to the same stage as the three sample dudes. I better learn to paint stuff quickly because in November I have to do a Vendetta...

Despite my terrible record when it comes to painting, I have actually finished a few things for the army - these guys for example, have a painted Chimera to ride around in:

I have yet to learn the ways of weathering stuff so this is not "finished"... but it is painted.

Finally, and also painted but not weathered properly, a trio of drop sentinels and some cool battlesuits, aka my 'ogryns':

You know, I might even learn how to take photos of stuff as I proceed through this challenge...

Okay! So that didn't go according to plan at all...

Instead of my original idea I appear to have been forced to leave all of my 40k stuff behind during the move to the UK. This does not bode well for hobby progress or wargaming in general... However, we've decided to focus on board games for a little while (at least until I can get some of my gear shipped/brought over to London). Also, if the rumours about Apocalypse 2.0 coming out in July prove true, there will surely be a super-heavy kit or terrain piece to pick up which should give me something to work on until the rest of the troops arrive in August/September.

In the meantime I'm just going to throw together some quick reviews/opinion pieces on the various board games that we try out!

Today, I made my way to the Orcs Nest (which even from our brief visit I would highly recommend) with the aim of grabbing Pandemic and King of Tokyo. I failed on both counts as neither will apparently be available until July... *but* instead, came away with Star Fluxx, Carcassonne and Death Angel (Space Hulk). I'm hoping the last one will satisfy my 40k urges for the moment. We chose Carcassonne because it's pretty highly rated and supposedly 'best' with 2 players, the other two were somewhat random selections. I'll share my thought son each of these once we've had a chance to sit down and play.

Forge World Open Day 2013

Over the weekend I took the short flight (followed by a much longer bus trip, it transpires) over to Nottingham to visit the mighty hobby citadel that is: Warhammer World.

I've wanted to go check it out for a long time now and the Forge World Open Day provided the perfect pretence. Myself and my buddy made all of our preparations a few months back; we snapped up Open Day tickets as soon as they were available, booked our flights and made a hotel reservation... but alas, it was not to be. At least, not for him. Suffice it to say that a much more important event took place that required his full attention (and certainly, that he be in the right country at the time). So, instead, my girlfriend joined me on the epic voyage over the seas to Games Workshop HQ... And to be fair, we did also manage to find a really good Indian restaurant and see a pretty impressive castle, so it was by no means a total loss for her.

Getting there from the hotel proved a little tricky but this was solely due to roadworks in the city... if you're staying in the city centre and plan on walking, the canal tow path is pleasant enough way to get there. Be warned though, it's currently blocked off at the bridges nearest to GW HQ. We used our amazing ninja skills to sneak around this seemingly impassable obstacle but such feats would not be recommended for anyone carrying large army cases or anything else that might impede your progress through minefields/razor-wire.

I wasn't sure what to expect from the place at all. To give you an idea, it's basically a couple of office/warehouse type buildings, one of which houses the miniatures hall, gaming/event area, bar and store - the other areas remained a mystery but are presumably where the resin mines and plastic forges are located. Also, I would imagine people actually work there and have you know, offices and things.

Moving inside, you head upstairs to the gaming/event hall (if you go upstairs again you'll get to the miniatures hall where all of the various army displays are). For the Open Day this was mostly taken up with a gigantic queue of people trying to buy Forge World gear. I'm guessing that equal parts fear (of limited stock) and excitement (at the shiny new book and resin things) kept these people queueing for the first hour or so. I don't really blame them but in truth I wasn't that interested in the new stuff this year, so we bee-lined straight for the bar. Now, you might think this was a waste of precious Open Day time but I assure you, my life would have been forfeit if I had not provided sustenance for my accomplice immediately (for we had not yet feasted that day).

Bugman's Bar is great - it's decorated in proper Warhammer Fantasy style and has a pretty good sense of humour about it. Plenty of shields, weapons and the occasional Orc head decorate the walls. If you're here for a long day of gaming or any big event, you'll probably end up eating and/or drinking here. Which, it turns out, is a good idea because the food was pretty good!

So, once the dreaded hunger had been sated we moved into the area (it was labelled a restaurant so maybe that's what it usually is...) that had been set aside for the actual Open Day. The walls of the room were lined with display cabinets, each manned by a member of the Forge World design team who were available to take questions and just generally chat about all things Forge World.

I managed to talk to quite a few of the guys that are primarily working on Heresy / IA miniatures. I'm not sure how much they're 'allowed' to tell us but it didn't seem as though they were being overly tight-lipped. They all seemed to be genuinely nice and were happy to talk to people at length about anything that was on display.

In terms of what was on show, my favourites are below:

Heresy Era Land Speeder

Another view of this, note the lascannons which may or may not actually be a valid armament...

Zone Mortalis Display - This was themed to be a World Eaters boarding action against a Salamanders ship but my love of the Imperial Navy drew my attention to the row of Lightnings.

HH Legion Praetors - I can feel my resistance to Heresy era miniatures crumbling...

Minotaur named Contemptor (although I forget his name now).

HH Whirlwind - Not sure about this one in its current state but the finished version may still impress.

Legion Fellglaive - Volkite main gun apparently, quite an impressive sight.

Rapier platforms with graviton gun and quad heavy bolters - nice, but no idea how effective these are.

Realm of Battle tile with earthworks - Pretty sure this is a Fantasy piece but some light conversion work would turn it into a fine Imperial Guard siege position!

Realm of Battle tile with crashed Thunderhawk - This is the raw version and the sheer level of detail really shows through here.

A painted version of the above RoB tile - This was part of the IA12 display board (as evidenced by the Minotaur casualty).

The Necron side of the IA12 board - The new bombers are pretty amazing in person.

Once we had spent plenty of time starting in awe at the displays we took a look around the Warhammer World store. Interestingly, the store at Warhammer World also stocks Forge World miniatures (if only they all did...) so I was able to get most of what I had planned on picking up without ever queueing. Other than that, it's your standard GW store but with some very cool stuff on display (mostly large imposing Forge World models).

And that was pretty much it, in a nutshell. We had to leave early since we needed to make our way back (seemingly all the way across middle-earth) to the airport. As a final judgement, with the flights and epic bus transfer (and having now actually seen the whole place once), I would say that it's probably not the kind of trip I'd be in a hurry to do again... However, since I'm moving to the UK anyway before next years Open Day... it wouldn't *be* the same trip... so we'll see.

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.