Painting... progressing

I've recently gained some further insight into keeping myself motivated to paint. This all came about in the past couple months, but here I will try to outline some of my 'tenets' for your perusal.

Getting the trollslayer done really sparked me to keep at it - had a couple slow months for painting. Since then, I've gotten all the armour done on my Raptors assault marines, finished up my two blood bowl goblins who've been languishing in base colours for a while, finished basing both my orc & undead blood bowl teams, and gotten a fair amount of paint onto an old Volkmar the Grim I plan to use as a Warrior Priest in WHQ. All this in under 10 days.

I believe I may have mentioned some points before, but they bear repeating.

1. Keep your batches "moderate" sized. This will vary from person to person, but for myself I've found a maximum of 5 models to be the best size. You can always have more than one similar 5 model batches, or increase the size of certain batches as required. You basically want to pick a size where each time you sit down to paint, you just start because even if you only do a wash on all their faces, you'll at least finish that step for the entire batch.
   
2. Have a few different batches going on at once. Recently I had the assault marines, blood bowl goblins, blood bowl teams to base and a couple individual fantasy models going at once. Stuck on what colour to paint a certain batches weapons? Switch to a different batch while you think about it. Not tons of time? Work on one of your smaller batches.
3. Switch up what painting methods you are using. The assault marines were mostly done with washes, I've done a fair amount of that method recently. Painting the trollslayer using standard paints was a breath of fresh air and gave me something different to focus on. This could work well for levels of detail too - have one batch to be basecoated and another batch where you are adding finer detail/highlights.
4. Switch up your modeling activities. Doing a dozen bases will take you 15 minutes if they are fairly simple, but this will break up the monotony of always being painting. Build another squad if you need a break from the brushes.
5. Keep lists/notes of how you plan to paint. I can't stress this enough - I couldn't find my book with the raptors test mini notes, so the assault squad does look slightly different to the test mini. A list gives you an immediate edge both in terms of tracking how well you are doing (a la "I scratched 4 items off my list today!!") and knowing where you are on a particular batch if you haven't touched it for a couple days ("Did I do one or two coats of yellow?")

Hopefully this proves to be helpful to someone.

Raptors test mini

It was a gorgeous day today so I got my Raptors assault squad completely primed up. Realized I'd promised some pics of the test mini - which was done using just washes for all of the armour.

Would appreciate some feedback, you'll notice the armour is quartered, I gave 2 quarters an extra green wash. Everyone I've asked has been 50/50 on whether they like that or the lighter one. Also, which metallic should I use? The bronze really pops but not sure if I like it. Finally do you like either of the colours on the eagle?

Front

Back

Left

Right

Painting... keeping focus (somewhat)

I had some hobby time this weekend, but unfortunately didn't get my Raptors assault marines fully undercoated on Friday, and it was wet out today so getting their primer done is delayed. I had a quick peek through my models looking for something ready to paint. During this time I added the scaavies I found and random WHFB models to my mini queue.

I ended up pulling out a dwarf trollslayer I kept from a bunch of random stuff with the idea of collecting WHFB models to use as WHQ players. I've gotten him all painted up and based - I used a round base with the thought it will be simpler for use in a dungeon setting.

Here's a front & back pic.

Necromunda @ 2HD... Day 4

Got a couple more necromunda games in at Two Headed Dragon yesterday.

First was a straight up gang fight (argh!) vs. Ian's enforcers that actually went swimmingly for me. His entire gang was out of action by the end of the game. Everybody got an advance or two, and it bumped my gang rating above 1200.

Second we played Lord of the Spire with 2 cawdor gangs (Karl, Phillip), my spyrers (we adjusted the rules to let me play) and Ian's enforcers. Looked like I had the game in the bag, but some brilliant shooting from Phillip and a timely shot at my base marker took my entire gang out of the game. Afterwards my Yeld got a chest wound (ouch!) and my Jakara died outright (DOUBLE OUCH!). Knocked my gang rating down by around 240 points. It's gonna be tough fighting with only four guys for the rest of the campaign (I've only gotten 1 of 10 outright kills towards my vow - I see myself getting completely scragged and having to re-start at some point).

Great fun though, been taking pictures of the terrain every week even just on my shitty camera phone. Once I get them off I'll update these posts with some pics.

Blood Bowl reinforcements

Just a quick note to say I've gotten my booster pack of undead blood bowl players painted up. I now have 17 models and a full selection of players to choose from when composing my team.

All that remains now is to try out dipping them, and then adding a little flock. First batch of stuff since I re-started the hobby that will get sealed. I've left the team page at 99% to reflect they aren't completely done.

I want to have a go at dipping them soon, so look for a post on that in the near future. At that point I'll update the pics on the team page. Next up is going to be some Raptors assault marines, I just need one eagle hilt from a chainsword and they'll be ready to undercoat.

Still have 15 more days to the halfway point of the year, and I'm twelve points ahead of my target. If I can finish those Raptors I should be well on my way to meeting my 2009 goal.

Lo2G final and Necromunda @ 2HD - Day 3

Stopped by 2HD today to finish up the Lo2G and ended up playing some Necromunda. Unfortunately the guys who are playing in the campaign were busy with their role-playing, so I ended up buying some primer, some brushes and a couple paints to start on the Spyrers I'm using in the Necromunda campaign to spend my time.

We've ended Lo2G early as there's only Philip and I left, and the Grey Knight program is closed - although both Philip and I are going to try to continue painting 150 points a month. The recent painting points I scored are from the orcs I painted.

Month 3 scoring;
3 Tristan - fully painted
4 Philip - fully painted, best painted
0 Ken

For reference (Grey Knight)
0 Karl

Final standings;
13 Tristan - fully paintedx3, best painted, 3 games, 1 win
14 Philip - fully paintedx3, best paintedx2, 2 games, 2 wins
4 Ken - fully painted, 1 game

For reference (Grey Knight)
3 Karl - fully painted

Congratulations to Philip. I think the plan is we split the third place prize. He'll get over $100 in GW loot and I'll get somewhere around $75.

Then I got a couple games of Necromunda in. First due to the massive rating difference I got to pick the scenario and picked hit & run. With my speed I was sure I would be able to quickly get a guy off safely. Ended up doing just that as Philip did a good job ensuring I couldn't get some easy kills before ending it. Yeld off on turn 3.

Hit & run is a great scenario for Spyrers. I can at most be missing one gang member, and every raider gets +10xp if you win. All my guys got some advances (even forgetting the bonus xp for having a lower gang rating)

Then we did a gang fight with three gangs. I only got a single wound in, and bottled on the third turn after Karl took down my Malcadon (getting blinded in one eye - HA who cares). But upon realizing not getting any bonus xp for gang rating - and complaining all day I couldn't roll a power boost - finally on my last roll my Orrus scores a power boost and I get a sustained fire dice for my bolt launchers.. /insert heavenly choir sound here

Necromunda @ 2HD... Game 1

Sorry for the lateness of this post. On Friday we got our Necromunda campaign started up at Two Headed Dragon. We have three gangs all rolled up (Cawdor, Enforcers, Spyrers). I decided to play the Spyrers as we already had a Cawdor gang, someone is borrowing my Escher (painting it too, hence the drop in my mini queue) and I didn't want to play test my Genestealer Cult gang again so soon. Also I've been itching to try the Spyrers as they are so different from everyone else.

We setup a beautiful board with a couple copies of the Necromunda card terrain with some additional stuff. Very terrain heavy made it a great game. I got completely smoked, 4 out of 5 Spyrers out of action at the end of the game (3 from rolling 4+ for man down at end of the game), they even had to give me a break when my Orrus died outright!

Afterwards I went through the Spyrer rules again and found tons of little tidbits I need to be aware of for next game to make my guys more resilient. Been a while since I've played so I forgot some Spyrer special rules & some other factors that would've made them harder to hit.

I'm going to work out some house rules for folks not playing games, the idea being everyone can schedule games at any time, so you should have enough time for 1 game a week. I'm also going to try and get a chronicle type newsletter going to increase interest. We have five guys playing right now, a couple more would be perfect.