I am very good at planning and very good at finishing things, just not so good at joining those two concepts together. I inevitably end up doing way more than I planned, way better than I planned, way later than I planned.
I was optimistically hoping to keep up weekly blog posts but I missed the last three. I do have some good news though. After what has now been six years I am proud to say that finally I handed up my PhD thesis. It was a monumental effort in the end so following its submission I took a week off, played with my 20 month old son, caught up on sleep and generally recovered from the thesis ordeal.
The year started with my three gaming mates all speculating
about what they were going to get painted this year. It was not long until this
idle chatter escalated into formal painting pledges. Liam (Frothing Muppet)
pledged a small horde of Orks which he has been making mad progress on
over the last two months. He originally posted about it here, and followed up with progress posts here and here and here and here and here and here... well you get the picture, Muppet has done a lot! James (The Hobbyist) has also been cutting
swaths through an Imperial Fist army. Unfortunately he is yet to blog his progress- we’ll
have to give him a nudge. James has has shown off a really nice chaos bastion which is worth checking out though. Finally, our third mate Dale (yet to become a blogger)
is working his way through some Raven Guard. Rightfully so, I have pledge some
Praetorians. Our goals were self chosen and there seems to have been two
different strategies at play. Liam and Dale have smaller pledges (around the 40
to 50 model mark) – aiming for realistically doable goals, while James and I
have gone for hyper ambitious pledges (around the 100 model mark) to use the
goal to really push ourselves. It is difficult to make comparisons between our
goals and progress seeing that we are painting different miniatures, under different time constraints and are painting at different standards. It is also worth
noting that Liam and Dale are probably better painters than James and I but
that being said we all are pushing each other along.
My pledge was initially a very open '100 models'. Within this tanks would count as 10, walkers 5, heavy weapons 3 and infantry as 1. I then refined this to models that I could field in my standard 1500 point list. For fun, our progress is plotted on the graphs below. The axis on the left depicts the pledge percentage completed (plotted by the thick lines and circles) while the axis on the right shows the total model count (plotted by the thin lines and crosses). At the end of January we were all reasonably bunched with us all completing around 10 models.
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| (yes there are Necrons still lurking in the background!) |
As for my recent painting, there really is not all that much
to report. I have pulled out some men to crew my gun emplacements and a few gunners for another two lascannon squads.
These guys are part my 122nd Regiment of Praetorian Artillery who
wear tan uniforms rather than red jackets like my line regiments. I have laid
down the basic colours and started the shading.
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| A few undecorated additions (they are joined by some 105th dragoons in blue coats -next of the to finish list!) |
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| Tan base coat and boots |
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| Some tan shading - before (right) and after (left) |
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| Boots highlighted |
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| More highlighted boots |
Currently I am stalling on making a decision on the guns. Originally I was painting a gun number on them, in the old 2nd / 3rd ed style. Although, now I'm toying with the idea of painting red lions on them to match my recent work. If the army were Cadians they would have their Cadian Gate emblem plastered on everything so I feel I should go with the red lion. I’d better make a choice soon so suggestions are welcome!!
Tally ho lads.
I'm always in awe of how large your army is, and how much work you've put into it.
ReplyDeleteAaah, those mice plans.....
ReplyDeleteI still think that hunting around will get you 'Crimson lion, rampant,' decals. But good work. Don't forget that an Earthshaker or entire strip of Aegis still only counts as one model, no matter how big. That El Dorado Necropolis ? If you''ve built it as one piece, it still only counts as one model.
The corollary to that is, you're doin' OK with your artillery men (who are lookin' good). And if you individually base your scarab swarm, you'll win. Not that it's a competition.
Good to see you postin' and congratulations on the thesis. Let's hope they like it.
Great post sir!
ReplyDeleteI still commend you in our painting pledge doing all those Guard....so many men........
And to address your point above, I will get my butt into gear and post up my painting pledge progress soon too :-)
http://www.wargametransfers.com/late-medieval.html
ReplyDelete