Paint it or Punt it

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.