Mantic Games Goblin Army

So setting SMART goals has been paying dividends, I’ve been giving myself the goal to just do a half hour of painting everyday so far and each time I’ve done so I ended up doing a  hour and lo and behold I’ve hit my goal of painting the skin on the rabble legion tonight. Tomorrow night I know I won’t be doing any hobby so I decided that my next goal would bve to get their black and grey headdress done Saturday night and then finish them off completely at a leisurely  pace on Sunday!

So after what has been a bit of procrastinating by doing other odds and ends related to this project (the king on the palanquin and the bit of red on the spitters) It finally clicked why I wasnt making the progress I wanted to in getting another big unit of goblins done. I was setting myself an unrealistic expectation of taking one whole day out of a weekend to just smash through the rabble legion (53 miniatures) in one big go. Now this worked for me when I did my spitters but if theres one thing I have learnt its that these spurts of hobby energy are not reliable for getting a larger project done.

So borrowing some of the theory from the Armies, Legions and Hordes book I decided I would set myself a S.M.A.R.T. goal.

For those who dont know a SMART goal is a goal that is:

Specific

Measurable

Achievable

Relevant

Time Bound

Now the smaller goal is getting this rabble legion finally done as part of my larger goal of having a playable army at the ready. I realised what I had been doing is setting myself a goal that was not achievable without me having a huge chunk of time to devote.

So my smart goal i have now set is to have the rabble legion fully painted come monday next week. How do i break this down into achievable and realistic bites? This i think is a key aspect of getting larger units of miniatures, especially for mass battle systems done. I decided I would set myself the aim of painting the first layer of skin by tuesday this week. This may seem like a modest goal and id say thats the point, I work during the week from home often until 6pm which means during the Canberra winter (which it is now) i dont particularly want to be painting too long out in my cold painting area in the basement. So by setting myself this modest goal i could be assured I could push through and get just a bit of painting done over the next two days.

I then said I would have the second and third layer finished by friday, followed by the black cloaks and then the final details on saturday and sunday. By Setting these goals I now have a concrete plan in my place for how im finally going to deal with this hobby roadblock (cause lets face it, painting 50-something goblins in one go is a daunting task). And its already paid dividends in terms of my progress, tonight i exceeded my expectations and actually finished layer one of the skin on the first day of the plan!

I guess what I am trying to get at when it comes to hobby and motivation in a project is that you need to be realistic and have a plan in place if you really wish to succeed at your army painting goal, even for smaller projects. When you set yourself unrealistic expectations or goals you will probably like me, find its easier to not even get started on making progress at all and procrastinate with other things you tell yourself are part of it all!

So here below you can see my goblins ready for second stage of skin painting.

One of the things ive realised id like to do with this project was to bring the mantic goblins (current and original from Kickstarter 1) to life and to do that I figured my army of goblins needed a little story bit of converting and story, I realised the core of my army eventually will be a legion of sharpsticks being the so called ‘elite’ of a goblin force and to remove the monotony of the 50 something goblins that will compose it, amongst all my other goblins i decided to create a goblin ‘king’ on palanquin. I wanted to use only mantic bits to create him so I set about and took my second goblin biggit I had lying around, I then took an old 40mm mdf base, scoured and scored it with my hobby knife before putting a dwarf throne onto the palanquin. I then took three spare spears from the mawbeast rider kit and fashioned them together to form the banner that would sit behind him. I then realised his palanquin was a little plain and so attached some treasure from the terraincrate series that i had spare and I was duly satisfied with how the little tyrant was looking.

The story of my goblins had now started coming together, my little goblin king had broken into an adjacent and forgotten dwarves keep in his lonely tunneling. Resulting in him becoming very wealthy and with enough bribes from his secret tunnel he assassinated and bought his way to lead the tribe of the red sign and become fat and large, no longer a mere rabble runt.

After making it to the top he had his best luggits bring the old dwarf kings throne for him to sit on. He decided however that the source of his great wealth would remain a mystery as he had those luggits duly get eaten by his tribes slasher thereafter. Now the little tyrant gets hauled around by the elite spiky biters legion, their loyalty secured by his gold. However plundering and dealing in dwarves holds and treasure has rapidly lead to him having a mark on his head, the dwarves are not known to take plundering and defilement of their sacred holds well!

The next stage in doing this little dude will be to work out how his palanquin will be carried, but I have to wait until all my spears for my sharpstick legion arrive in the mail, and with corona impacting shipping from the UK to Aus I don’t know when that will be ?

So I decided tonight after work I’d make it my goal to keep progressing with my goblins, but realised my project was lacking something that said to me that these were the comical ridiculous fighters known as goblins, while perusing through an old white dwarf magazine I realised what it was, they needed a bright colour that screamed, we are goblins and we like showing off. So I went back and took my bright and wonderful Mars Red from the army painter (which I was already using on their glyphs on banners) and did up the bows and spears for the slasher ballistae. Now it may look garish to some but to me it adds the character and ostentatiousness that is the hallmark of goblins in my opinion. It also for me is a way to pay homage to the armies that were proudly displayed at the time of my youth when I was first drawn to this hobby!

Now on the slightly less exciting side I went ahead and did the bronze and then straight after (when dry) washed my goblin rabble in strong tone. Not much to say on that other than that progress is happening and I remain committed  to my goal to have 2000 points of the little devils done up for when life is a little more normal.

I’ve been a bit lax in this project as of late  but finally picked it up again, I didn’t want to flood the site with progress picks but so far this week I’ve managed to basecoat the metal and cloth on 53 goblins for my rabble legion and assembled 3 of my mincers. Stay tuned until Sunday when I will hopefully have a legion of goblins done and my mincers all at least basecoated and blocked in! Ive found that something thats really helped me with coming back to this project is the fantastic book by Dave Taylor called Armies, Legions and Hordes. If you’re starting your first army or even struggling to continue on an existing project, this book lays out great theory behind getting your big hobby project done. In fact what got me started blogging on beasts of war were the tips in this book and I’m using this as a motivator to keep me going!

So since the last update I have been painting but with everything else going on hobby took a bit of a backburner, but here is my goblin slasher in all his painted glory!

This whole model was just a fun blast from start to finish, the goblins are great little figures and the beasty himself was perfect for airbrushing washing and dry in, he was done entirely using the army painter paints, gamers grass and the Luke’s APS battlefield ready basing range.

So Pawel “the swordmaster of Hoeth” is a local player in my scene and a pillar of the community. Every year for king’s of war he runs on Facebook monster March, where the challenge is to paint up a big old monster, you can read the first entry here: https://swordmasterofhoeth.blogspot.com/2020/03/monster-march-4-part-1.html?fbclid=IwAR1JJ5ZZahzxBujjidYnJPghz8cYZ0LZADC4P9ZMpK3qSOUgHwVIS8ePHao&m=1 along with all the other great content he produces. So given my goblins are already in progress I chose to do my slasher! I started off first by washing the model in warm soapy water as is recommended with all resin kits as a result of the release agent potentially being problematic to priming and painting.

I then went ahead and with hobby cutters and a hobby knife removed all excess supports and flash, which on this kit were extremely minor! I there after assembled the model to the point where I can prime him on Tuesday and still be able to reach and paint all the seperate parts. This model went together like a glove and will likely only require minor gap filling which I am well pleased with.

My next entry will be when his gaps have all been filled and he’s received the first coat if primer and hopefully a bit of paint!

So today I thought I’d get some assembly done, but as soon as I sat down at my hobby desk with the weekender I realised today was a day to paint. So I gathered my first horde of goblin splitters and 6 hours later here they are, the first unit for my goblin army completed!

I had alot of fun painting these, and the satisfaction I felt  gluing the last one onto the base was well worth it! The next steps for this project will be to paint another horde, probably this time of sharpsticks. I hope to get those finished by Thursday as part of my overall plan to get 1500 points done by a tournament in Sydney in march and 2000 points by end of April.

Until next time, thanks for following!