Paint it or Punt it

The story behind the Legion core box ties to last year’s snag-a-normie challenge. I went halfers on the box with a friend. We managed a build session and one short paint session before lock-down happened. I went ahead and painted my droid troops but left everything else untouched. Fast-forward to November and he admitted that he didn’t think he was interested in painting minis after all. So they got added into my pile of unpainted grey, not likely to be added to but possibly to be played with at a skirmish level in the future.

Painting clone troopers, I thought I’d try the Zorpazorp technique but after the first couple of stages they looked like crap so I went back to check I was following the video properly. Instead of watching it on my phone, I watched it on my PC screen and found out the flaw in my plan… I think the ones in the video look like crap too. That’s maybe not fair but they aren’t neat and tidy enough for my tastes so it was time to mount a rescue. Nothing needed stripped or anything crazy like that, just lines cleaned up, evidence of the drybrushing eradicated and many layers of thin white paint patiently applied.

After those were done it was time to move onto the Barc speeder. I wanted it to look different to the clones so went with a grey palette and some pretty heavy weathering. My friend confirmed he’d like them with 501^st colours so I went in and added the blue along the sides. Then went back and painted the clones. The sources for clone markings are all over the place and truthfully, it’s not my army so I don’t care. They are clearly 501^st, my job is done.

Next I finished up the droid side by painting the droidekas and then a fun little evening working on Grievous and Kenobi. Once everything was done, the horrible Geek Gaming Mars base ready mix got brought out so they match the other droids. Seriously, great idea for a product but it is a nightmare to work with. The pigment gets on everything and after sealing and touching up, it would have been faster going with any of the other methods I considered way back in March when I did the first lot of B1s.

With that, the Legion core box is finished. I won’t be jumping to paint more of either faction for now. I am tempted by building a Rebel force but truthfully it is such an expensive game that I just don’t know I’ll be able to justify it.

Time for a January wrap up. Plenty of progress and some self examination.

After I working through the Imperial Assault goal in December, I decided to try and lay out the rest of the collection to be painted as monthly targets. For January, I wanted to finish off what was in the Star Wars Legion core box, and paint up some odds and sods minis that somehow have taken up residence in my flat. I also wanted to get the last batches of eBay sales up and running.

I’ll do a separate post for the Star Wars Legion update but let’s cover some other things.

January stats:

Sold: 96 (plus 250 pending)

Painted: 37

Collection painted: 43.3%

Quick little section this one. Two cows and goat.

From Dust Tactics.

I shit you not.

I have no idea if these will ever get used but 100% painted is 100% painted! Painting these took so little time that I added in the gangers from Judge Dredd too. After so much white it was a joy to paint garish colours!

Adding these to the 4 Burrows and Badgers minis from the start of the month and the total painted for the month is 37. Painting up the rest of the Burrows and Badgers kickstarter is one of next month’s goals.

The last few lots went up on eBay and I was happy with that. Then I had a chat with a friend about his Legion collection. I was giving him a hard time about owning two of everything for all four factions. “You’ll never paint all that and you’ll never play that many armies” said I.

Of course, I am sitting in my own (albeit much smaller) glasshouse. I have 9 factions for Middle-Earth SBG. Nine!!! Not one of them is a complete army and I’ve only ever played small points games. Stones came crashing down on my head and so I decided that most of it has to go.

I’m keeping the two forces that I have painting everything I own for (the Pelennor Fields box) and for the meantime I’ll keep hold of the Minas Tirith that I painted last year though their place in the cabinet is precarious. I’m also going to keep one of the two Fellowship sets I have and in fact they are earmarked to be my Spring Clean Challenge project this year.

If I want to buy more MESBG then it makes much more sense to pick out specific units for the two armies I have and build them out rather than just buying shit cheaply on eBay. This decision also dramatically changes the outlook for the Paint it or Punt it challenge. Of the 500 odd miniatures that remained to be painted, nearly 300 of them were MESBG. Getting rid of them and planning out the remains to be painted up as monthly goals, I think I should get to 100% painted collection by May. Or at least the collection as it stood up until now but that’s a topic for a future post and possibly future project logs…

Finished one unit of 7 Clones. Not using unit markings (for the time being) because technically they aren’t mine.

The bases will match the droids when I’m done which means Geek Gaming Mars Earth basing material. It’s messy as heck though so I’m going to wait until probably the rest of the box is done before breaking that out.

The streams today were great and helped pass the time for painting white… thanks to the OTT crew for putting them on.

Don’t know why I thought painting white armour was the way to beat the Blues today! Slowly grinding these out though.

I started off using the Zorpazorp paint technique but I really didn’t like the look. Just too messy for my tastes.

So it’s back to many layers of thin coats but it’s starting to get there

With OTT’s Blue Monday streams happening, I decided to clear my work day yesterday so I could have a hobby day today.

Going to see if I can bash through all the minis ready to paint from the Star Wars Legion core set. A friend was going to be painting these up but decided he doesn’t like painting once he started half of them. I stripped them down and reprimed (accidentally a different base primer, Wraithbone instead of Corax). If I get through all of these I have Obi Wan and Grievous sitting next to me…

I’ve spent the first two weeks of the year working on terrain but this weekend marked the first time painting minis. The original plan was to finish up the Imperial Assault goal from December but I’ll be honest, I got bored painting the AT-STs.Instead, while updating the spreadsheet for the last post, Burrows and Badgers got in my mind as something nice to start the year with.

B&B minis are just a delight to paint. Simple and quick to block out without too much detail, it is just really satisfying to paint them. I decided to tackle something new for me, tartan. I know, I know… it’s embarassing that despite being Scottish and indeed being of one of the major historical clans, I’ve never tried painting tartan before. I couldn’t really get a good photo on my phone but I’m happy with the result. It was a very simple base and two colours for the check.

I also realised as I finished up painting that I don’t have notes about my basing scheme for the other B&B minis that I did in the past. I used to be so carefree and had so much more faith in my memory.

Thankfully when I went into the RUB with my flocks in it, I found and unlabelled box of flock that I clearly made from other types… No idea what is in it but it is the right mix so fingers crossed there is enough to finish off all the remaining B&B minis! Don’t be like me kids, be organised and give your future self a break. Take notes.

First 4 miniatures of the year done.

I’ve spent a few hours today going through models I know snuck their way into the flat since the last time I did a spreadsheet update so that I can start the second year of this project on an honest footing… sort of.

A couple of cheap ebay pick ups mean that total model count went up in Q4 having gone down for the previous 3 quarters of 2020.

There was shiny syndrome as usual in the form of the Khorne Daemons getting expanded. I’ve changed my mind about them and will be moving them on to fund future projects.

I’ve earmarked the last batch of things to be sold off. Then it is time to get back into painting.

At the start of the project last year my aims were simple: get my collection under control and stop kidding myself about games that I was never going to go back to.

The collection shrank from 1281 to 755 (-526). Painting % went from 8.8% to 32.9% thanks to Painting and Punting.

Games I got rid of everything for in alphabetical order

• Age of Sigmar
• Dust
• Guild Ball
• Infinity
• Kill Team
• 40K

There were some unfinished armies that moved on with the intention that new ones will replace them for the same game (mainly Kings of War).

The biggest loser was GW – I love the quality of their models but increasingly I’ve no interest in playing their games, the rules just don’t do it for me. Over the year I came to realise I have turned into one of those people who just reads the fiction. Other than MESBG, I don’t think there will be many GW purchases in my future.

The main result for me was beginning to question far more my motivations for buying models. I didn’t play a game at all in the whole of 2020 but have been working with the mindset of Beyond Covid. Getting back to my local club, GW isn’t played so thankfully I won’t be missing out.

The main aim for the Paint or Punt Project remains working towards 100% painted. Breaking it down to smaller goals looks like this for at least the first half of the year:

1. Of the 520 models that remain unpainted, 279 are MESBG because it is extremely easy to pick up cheap ebay armies. If I can get half of the factions completely painted I’ll be happy (currently 2 out of 9)
2. Burrows and Badgers to 100%
3. Finish painting the Star Wars Clone Wars core box now that I have inherited the painting responsibilities for all of it instead of just my half.
4. Judge Dredd 100%. These were given to me by a friend who was clearing out his own collection a couple of years ago and I’d really like to get them into the display cabinet
5. Frostgrave. With the intention of playing through the solo campaigns and scenarios at some point, it would be nice to have it mostly painted up.

One of the things not curently in the spreadsheet is my Mantic project. As I said above, I have intended to get a new KoW army since early last year and that remains a big part of this year’s hobby goals. This has been added to because Armada looks like my jam and I have some models on the way for it already.

Mantic will get it’s own project in the future but it’s numbers will be part of quarterly reviews.

Right, I think that’s enough rambling for now. I suppose I better get to painting…

Somehow it is 2021. I’m not going to flog the 2020 horse but obvisouly I haven’t updated this project since the summer so it is time for a quick recap. After July I didn’t really paint anything and lost interest in most of the hobby again. I didn’t even log in here. I spent time on RPGs with friends but mostly just played video games and watched movies. Time well wasted as the expression goes though not progress towards my project goals.

At the start of December I decided to fire myself back into the hobby side by doing a reasonably sized mini project that ties into another 2021 goal – playing more of my solo games. My Imperial Assault collection is limited to the core box and a handful for the character expansions so with only 48 miniatures it felt like an achievable goal in a month. I didn’t get to the two AT-STs but everything else got done.

I haven’t updated my spreadsheet since the summer either and though there isn’t much change, I did find some extra miniatures in random boxes so I’ll add them in over the next few days. I started the new year by giving the glass cabinet a good dust so I figured why not take photos of everything painted over the last two years.

In 2019 I completed 104 models and in 2020 I finished 155. Seeing the numbers written down like that, I’m happy but knowing how big the gaps in my hobby time were, clearly it could have been substantially more than that. I’m trying to go easy on myself about I still really want to work towards 100% painted in the next couple of years. I’m going to start the year by finishing off a couple of models to close out a couple of smaller projects and then I’ll pick what takes my fancy.

Another batch of Minas Tirith warriors done in the last week. This was a smaller group, just 15 of them but represents all of the spear and shield models in the collection.

By the end of them, fatigue had started to kick in with the paint scheme so I’m giving myself a couple of weeks off. I’ve worked out that to finish all of my currently owned MESBG minis by the end of the year, I need to get through 12 a week.

Looking through what’s left for something a little different to paint I found all the Rivendell elves (from the Last Alliance) and so they are in Dettol with a test model done.

I know very little about Napoleonics and as I have said before this box was bought to act as a palate cleanser. I’m thoroughly enjoying painting them and over the last couple of days finished another 12 to give me three bases. There’s still the same again to be painted but I’ll be putting them aside for a few weeks as I work on more Minas Tirith warriors and the next part of my Khorne army.

I’m struggling to get hobby done right now – there’s been a pigeon trapped in a cavity wall for six days now and it can’t be saved. The volume of noise makes concentrating on anything difficult. Joined up thinking is aspirational at best.

I started these Perry French a month or two ago and I’m really enjoying painting them. The lighting makes the grey coats look the same colour as the trousers but I swear there is a difference! The idea is just to bash out three at a time when I have a gap or need a change.

They are very clean looking and the basing isn’t finished but it just gave me a little lift today.

Back around February or March 2019, I picked up a large Gondor army from eBay so dirt cheap. We’ve all had those sales, the ones where you feel kind of bad about how little you paid. Then the army turns up and you don’t feel so bad… no? Maybe just me then!

The whole army is around 125 models, somewhere between 20-30 of them are in various stages of broken. Everyone of them needs stripped. I did the only sensible thing and put them in the cupboard and forgot about them.

Under this project I’ve been dividing them up and working in batches. I’ve already painted up all the archers. I have all the spearmen in Dettol to strip right now but I found a bunch that I had stripped and primed back before Corona appeared for a Battle Companies campaign that hasn’t happened.

I have a basic “get it done” paint scheme. I’ll put more effort into heroes but this is about getting the nearly 100 warriors done without wanting to throw them all out the window.

8 out of the 12 Roman Legionaries are now painted and in the cabinet. I didn’t really enjoy them as much as I thought I was going to and I’m not entirely sure why. I was frustrated with skin colour and it is my first foray into transfers which are fine at a distance but not great up close.

Primed – Green Stuff World brush on white

Chainmail – base coated in GW Abaddon black then drybrushed with AP Gun metal, wash Agrax Earthshade, highlight Gun metal

Shirt/tunic – AP Skeleton bone, wash Agrax Earthshade, highlight same as base

Leather trim, belts and slings – GW Mournfang Brown, wash Agrax Earthshade highlight same as base

Skin – Kislev flesh, wash Agrax Earthshade, highlight same as base

Helmet – base GW Yriel Yellow, coat of GW Gehenna’s Gold, wash Agrax Earthshade.

Plume – GW Abaddon black, wash Agrax Earthshade, highlight Celestra Grey

Shield – base Vallejo Cavalry Brown, coat of GW Mephiston Red. Edging GW Gehenna’s Gold and the backs are painted with GW Mournfang Brown

Bags – AP Desert Yellow, wash Agrax Earthshade.

Basing – Stirland mud, drybrushed with AP Desert Yellow and AP Skeleton Bone. Tufts are AP Swamp. Rim is GW Steel Legion Drab

I’ve not been posting much because, though it is an overused phrase these days, time has ceased to have meaning. Between stress and quarantine it has been six months since I worked. I haven’t finish many models over the last few weeks largely because I dived back in to World of Warcraft and have two expansions worth of content to catch up on. I did have some photos to show working on the Gondor project for the promised post but seem to have lost them – I plan on starting stage two in the next few weeks so I’ll take more then.

This post is more about the Q2 stats. I have changed the naming convention a little to make it easier to parse. When I post rather than titling it according to the quarter we are moving into, it is a retrospective of the one we are leaving.

An increase in overall Collection Painted from 13.7% to 21%. Collection total decreased from 921 to 814 but we’ll come back to these numbers. It is worth noting that I found a box of mixed random minis which should have been included in the initial counts in January however rather than negating previous posts, I just added them in Q2.

Let’s break it down a little.

I started stage one of the Gondor Project which saw me strip, repair and fully paint 27 Warriors with Bow. Breaking them into batches of  five made the job less soul destroying but I am very aware that there is a long way to go one this project.

I also painted up the B1 droids from the Clone Wars starter box for Legion (see last post).

I managed to get rid of the old Cadians, Catachan and dinky size Space Marines. Also punted all the Dust minis. There are more flagged to go but with lockdown I haven’t even tried to move them on. I’m expecting to have a brutal cull in Q3 to get the Punt It section of the challenge completed. At this point the total of the collection should be down around 745 however there has been an added element to the challenge…

Call it Shiny Syndrome. Call it Covid Comfort spending. Whatever you call it, it adds numbers and reduces % painted.

I added a box of SPQR Romans and Perry French Napoleonics to the collection in Q2. The Romans are two thirds painted at this point but weren’t at the end of June so they get bumped to Q3’s stats. The French are designed to be palate cleansers and so there are more than one quarter painted but they aren’t based so I don’t include them in the painted column.

Q3 is also about to get a bunch of minis added as I am picking up a new army for 40K’s 9th edition. Rather than buying a bunch of boxes all at once I am just buying and working on one box at a time. This is a big change of behaviour for me and is definitely an outcome of this project so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Nearly two months since the last update and even before then, the hobby momentum had already swung away from me. However, it seems to have returned and I’m not one for looking in horse mouths.

Given the current situation, I don’t see the gaming clubs managing many meetings this year and even when they do, I’m not sure how comfortable I’ll feel going to them. With that in mind, my goal is now just to paint as much as I can so that when I feel ready, armies will be fully painted. I’ve also decided to pick up random boxes of things that I would just like to paint – they might not ever see a table but they’ll look good in the model cabinet.

I went for an easy win first of all by finishing up my B1 droids. They were part of the Snag-a-Normie challenge but who knows when we’ll get together for a painting session. They didn’t need much to finish them. Highlights and basing and they were done. I based with the Geek Gaming Base Ready Mars mix. It turned out to be way dustier than I was expecting but I brushed a little up their legs and then a coat of spray varnish. I can’t remember the last time I varnished models to be honest. The mix was so dusty and being coloured red it left smudges on your fingers every time you handled the droids though.

I’ve always wanted to get into Napoleonic armies but the scene here intimidates me. As I said at the start of the post, I’m also going to paint things just for the fun of painting them so I picked up a box of Perry French Line Infantry a couple of weeks ago.

Other than forgetting how much I hate painting white, it’s been fun so far. I’m not cranking them out, just working on 3 at a time when I fancy it. Not sure what I’m going to do for basing yet but there’s still another three dozen to go anyway!

About a year ago, I got a bargain on eBay for Middle Earth Strategy Battle Game. There are 125 minis in all, some damaged beyond repair and all in need of loving care. Every one of them needs stripped and so I chucked the heroes and all the archers into the Dettol and away we go.

Primed black and then I started to block out colours (I’ll give them their own post later and list the paints then)… then I wondered why I hadn’t just primed in something metallic! There is a lot of metal armour on these guys but what’s done is done.

Well hasn’t the world changed in 3 months! I haven’t been hobbying much but that’s because for the last month I’ve been working on my Twitch channel after finally deciding to start streaming for more than just my 24 hour marathon once a year.

Today is another numbers post as I wrote up the spreadsheet figures for the start of Q2 (thus reflecting the changes since Q1). I’m not sure how interesting these posts are to other people.

So there is a significant jump (8.8% to 16.4%) in overall collection painted but that’s largely due to a number of pre-virus sales. I shifted a fair amount of Infinity, the KOW dwarves, 15mm Germans and the Guild Ball box. Some of the 40k went to a good home and some went in the bin after sorting.

I also picked up Legion as part of Snag-a-Normie 2020 but have stalled on painting it due to quarantine. I’d been humming and ha-ing about finishing the minis off without my friend. They’d be easy to finish in an evening and I think I’d feel better for it but I don’t want him to feel left behind. Then along came Spring Clean Challenge…

Which lead to 5 minis being added to the Frostgrave/RPGs total but that will be addressed in a separate project as I am resurrecting my Frostgrave project from the “On Hold” tab.

Overall, there were some easy gains here – or losses given that I sold them? I painted a few minis (Blood Bowl mainly) but it has been hobby light. The next 3 months should be interesting as I don’t really think selling on is viable at the moment so the Punt It pile will have to be left in stasis. On the other hand, I have a bunch of minis that are almost finished and the Frostgrave Spring Clean should provide a bunch more.

Unfortunately February came and went without us managing to get another session painting up Star Wars. Life just kept getting in the way. We finally got a couple of hours this week to crack them out and start the painful first lesson of “how we paint white armour”. The Normie reports enjoying the act of painting but doesn’t completely believe me that all models go through a stage of looking bad before they look good 😂 He’s been using the first scheme from the Zorpazorp painting tutorial and I’m confident it will look good once it’s done.

I’ve been avoiding the minis unless the Normie was around because I didn’t want to race ahead. So this week in our 2.5 hour session I threw Black Templar and Skeleton Horde contrast paints over a white base coat. I might go back and put a bit more Black Templar on them as I’m not entirely happy with how it looks. In the name of keeping things easy for the Normie, I’m sticking to the same techniques so next up is a dry brush and some detailing. Simple basing scheme and they should be good to go in another 3 hour session I reckon.

Most of the rest of the month has been focused on RPG stuff as we are about to start a new campaign and I’m in the early stages of planning one myself. I did a little organising of my Pathfinder Pawns whilst catching up on the Weekenders from last week. The sleeves are used by coin/stamp collectors and are perfect for the cardboard pawns. I need to buy some of the larger sleeves for the larger/gigantic monsters but everything is now alphabetical and easy to flick though.

I also painted up the barricades from the Legion core box. I only have black primer instead of the grey I’d have preferred. The mould lines are very noticeable on them which was frustratingly time consuming to tidy up. Next I just did layers of dry brushing and finished with a wash (not pictured). They don’t look amazing but for something extra to chuck down on the table, they’ll do.

Tonight I discovered an unexpected boon to having everything catalogued. I knew I wanted to work on something whilst I caught up with some YouTube but I didn’t have any set plans. Low and behold, I now have a spreadsheet I can flip through to come up with something. I decided to pull out the box of RPG minis and see what took my fancy.

First up was some Moonclan grots. At some point they have been intended as an archery unit for an AOS army but I abandoned those plans a couple of years ago. I kept these twenty because I figured at some point I’ll use them in an RPG campaign of a game like Rangers of Shadowdeep.

Tonight I focused on getting a few arms swapped to a nice mix of melee and ranged and getting everyone on bases.

Next up was an old Orc chariot. I wanted each piece to be useable separately so there’s actually a cart, two orcs and two boars. I’m debating basing the cart to use as a piece of scatter terrain but I think I already have something similar so I might just leave it for now.

Unfortunately the weather is awful so I don’t know when I’ll get them primed. At some point I’ll need to look into brush on primer!

Most of February has been spent getting rid of models through eBay. It I did do a little painting. I bought these dwarves when Blood Bowl relaunched in 2016, they played one match, the group fell off the game and they have sat part painted ever since. Recently a couple of friends are talking about getting back in to the game and though I think it’ll wind up being more talk than actual action, I figured now was as good a time as any to bash these out.

Now I’m not going to lie, one of the reasons they have sat so long is I didn’t enjoy painting them in the slightest. I picked out a colour scheme I liked but once I got started I just couldn’t find the enthusiasm. Honestly Blood Bowl is a game I’ve played because other people love it rather than any overwhelming passion for it myself.

For this attempt, I decided to use the team as a testing ground for some Contrast paints that I have picked up for other projects. The Contrast colours used are Skeleton Hoard, Dark Angels Green and Black Templar. I then went in with various normal paints.

The basing is very simple, just some pva and a nice bright green flock. I wanted something that was almost cartoon like in colour for the pitch. I’ll paint in some white lines and possibly splatter some Blood for the Blood God this week but other than that, I’m calling them done.

I didn’t enjoy painting these anymore this time around but they are now done. I didn’t bother with extra highlights etc, this was a quick tabletop standard job. Should we get games going in the future at least I can bring a fully painted team.

I knew that coming in to this project I was going to have to provide myself with numbers to confirm/deny what I think I’ve done towards it. That’s just how my brain works. It is too easy to tell yourself that you are making progress without actually doing it. For example I like to think that I’m good at getting rid of things that aren’t being played however after counting everything I own I realised that I haven’t been for the last few years!

Part of January was taken up doing an stocktake of every model in the flat and sorting them into two piles – Painting (keeping) or Punting (selling). I downloaded a spreadsheet designed by Rodge back when he did his 100% Painted Challenge. As the goal of this project is ultimately to get to 100% painted by the end of next year, the functionality of it is perfect for what I’m looking for.

I’m actually embarrassed by these numbers – I knew I hadn’t painted much over the last few years but this is daft! I have a lot of models that are built and part painted but apparently getting a model to “completed” is a problem for me.

I found a box of mixed minis after I had inputted everything to the numbers will actually be a little different but only by maybe a half dozen models.

To get into the Painted column, a model has to be painted to at least tabletop standard and properly based.

Obviously the main two ways to get to 100% are to paint more or sell things that are unpainted. Of what’s here, more than half are marked to go.

Once I did the stocktake I made the mistake of putting everything back in the cupboard to tidy the place up and then have done nothing with them all since 🙂 I caught myself two days ago mentally justifying keeping the Kings of War dwarves and realised I need to get back on track. In the last 24 hours I’ve put 10+ listings up on eBay (inc the dwarves) and it’s feeling better already.

Now to get on with the painting side of the project!