Paint it or Punt it

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.