The Return : part 2

Ok, I'll try to come back to the blog and painting.

I haven't painted jack in several months. I went through a pretty full blown gaming burnout but that is finally passing over.

But I'm moving this weekend so no painting for a while.

What I will instead do is list (kind of like new year resolutions) what my major goals will try and be in the painting/gaming things.

1) GenCon 2007 - Yes, I'm making the plans to go. So hopefully not losing a job or something I am looking to play in a Warmachine or hordes tourny. I have been speaking with Rob it sounds like a 500 point Hordes tourny might be the way to go. I haven't decided if I will stick with Trollbloods or try skorne.. so either way

(high)

500 point Horde Army (x2 since I will make sure Rob has an army IF he assures me he is going)
750 points Khador Warmachine Army

2) Tournies - I'm going to try and get out to the local warmachine/horde tournies to help prepare for GenCon. (high)

3) Eldar army - For 40k. Yes I'm back and willing to play it again. Will try to update it and probably repaint a fair amount. (low)

4) Tau army - For 40k. Yea, same thing as eldar. (low)

5) Skaven army - For Fantasy. I have a really good asian theme going with them and I just need to go the extra steps to finally get it all finished. (medium)

6) Confrontation - Goblins (because samurats are cool), Dwarves and undead will be my focused armies... (speaking of Dirz.. I think someone still has mine from the last gencon). Plus stuff of Rob's I need to paint. I don't suspect this game will be played more often right now so it is ranked low for me. (low)

Next update maybe in a week after I get a chance to unpack some stuff.

My Drinking Buddy is Ready

Well I finally got my first customized Troll finished off last night. Luckily class ended about an hour early as our guest lecturer actually moved through the material much faster than our regular professor. That allowed me the last 30 minutes I needed to finish off the axer, putting the last highlights on him and finally painting in the eyes on the Troll and the Whelp. I'm shooting for a finished Impaler by the end of this weekend. We shall see how it goes.

What is a reasonable amount of time to finish a figure???

If you can’t tell I’m actually trying, once again, to keep the Blog updated. I’m motivated to paint now, just no damn time, which seems to be complicating my attempts to finish figures. It’s gotten to the point I’ve completely given up my painting desk in my office. My new Painting space is at the coffee table in the living room adjacent to the TV. Now since it’s on the coffee table I’m sitting on the floor and catching whatever time I can to work on the miniatures.

Now this set up is made even better by the three canine companions on the floor with me. I’ve got: Faust AKA “90 pound lap dog”, Vlad AKA “Lick it until it bleeds” and Tasha AKA “Play with the human on the floor”

Despite these three the only place I’m making any painting progress is sitting on the floor of the family room working on the Trolls. Since Monday I’ve had a total or 3 hours to paint. Half of that was in the wee hours of the morning when I couldn’t sleep. It looks more and more like the only opportunities I have to paint are 30minutes here and there, and I’d rather be with my wife then anyway. So maybe this weekend I’ll have some more time to sit on the floor, fending the dogs away from me, enjoy watching some Battlestar Galactica, Robot Chicken, or some movies on the TV. Looking more and more like my painting “studio” will be relegated for use on high quality figs for the sake of painting, not supporting my growing gaming enthusiasm!

Of course while trying to do this I spend more time thinking… “These things take forever to paint” So what’s a reasonable amount of time to spend on a tabletop figure. Even on Privateer infantry unit I’m spending probably 4 hours on each fig. Sure I’m mass painting 6-10 at a time but the whole unit take anywhere from 24 – 40 hours of painting time.

God I need AT-43 and/or Battlefield Evolution to finally get here!

Sleep? Who needs that crap?!

Thanks to a pressing school project on Global Positioning Satellites (Can someone please tell me what the hell GPS systems have to do with Biodefense?!) I enjoyed a rousing night of insomnia. As the clock turned over to 2:30 I decided I'm better off with 2 hours of crappy sleep rather than another 2 hours and breaking REM sleep to get to work. So I did what any reasonable gamer would do in this instance. Got my ass up and painted.

So my first Troll Impaler got himself an extra 1.5 hours or so of solid painting on him, clocking him up to about 2 hours between yesterday and today. In that time I've got him nearly completed. Sure he doesn't look done yet, and I probably have another 1 - 1.5 hours on him. But I'm pleased with how he's coming out. Right now I need to finish off his straps and other minor details. The bulk of the painting and layering is done. He should easily be done by the weekend. I'll probably hold off photos until I get a full group shot in at the end.

After this guy it's time to fix up my drinking Troll axer buddy, with a brand new dragon head stein!

So I've been looking over my Trollbloods recently, and kicked off some painting on them. I've got an idea for a nice 500 point Trollblood force that I'd like to try out and I'm shooting to get it painted before I acutally use it. Luckily I pretty much have no serious opportunity to play before January so I have a shot of actually doing this. It also helps that the Fell Caller is not released until mid/late December, and one of those is key for fleshing out the force anyway. In addition to that I've got Jeff's customized Impaler and Axer looking at me wondering why they only have skin tones and some of the leather armor painted.

I've gotten Doomshaper mostly finished, I need to pick out a few more details on him and paint up his Tartan, shouldn't be too bad actually. The tartan design I've got working is pretty easy to execute, assuming I can get a steady hand for the pin striping. I accomplish that mostly with alittle bourbon while painting. Working great to steady the hand however if I mistake the drinky-drink for the paint brush wash water it doesn't taste too good.

The Tartan is a stylized version of the Kilgour Tartan pattern (or atleast thats what numerous google image searches are telling me) to make it actually paintiable on a figure. I'd put in an image of the taratan pattern, except the MS paint version I did up does not show correctly in Blogger.

For the 500 point force I've got the Dire Troll Mauler and 8 Scattergunners completed. I'll still need to finish Doomshaper, then start up some Impalers and an Axer. Ofcoruse I'll need the previously mentioned Fell Caller As a side motivational factor I've got a copy of Final Fantsy XII waiting for me once I'm finished these guys. Maybe that will be some workable motivation.