Broken Paintbrush

So as part of my plan to reinvigorate my hobby passion I am looking at picking up the gaming side as well. The problem though is the GW store in Kent, WA (the US city, not the UK Kent) closes to early for my to get home and get a game in after work. So I’m looking for a gaming club or just a group of guys from the Kent/Covington area who have a spot to play in the evenings.

If anyone knows of a group or how to find such groups please hit me up!

It is amazing how fast four months go. I have little hobby work to show for it though I have set my self some goals for the next year (not really news years resolutions, but close).

By tomorrow I should be posting the finished Cypher and his command squad. He has been sitting on my desk at 95% complete for these last 4 months and I am just about to finish him off.

As for the future goals, I have decided that rather than plodding along on my chaos forces I need to mix it up a bit. Over the next year I plan on building and fully painting 500 point armies for my (other) favourite armies. I’ve always been more of a hobbiest/painter than a gamer so these armies are for the pure joy of building and painting. The armies I plan on doing are: Orks, Tau, Necrons, Tyrinads, and Mentor Legion. Thanks to the AoBR set I already have near 500 points worth of Orks and have finished putting them together and ready for painting. For the Tau I already have a commander and his side-kick finished so it is just a matter of building up an army around them. I have a combat squad of Mentor Legionaries finished and plenty of parts to build the others. The Necrons and Tyrinads would be starting from scratch.

In between these for armies I still plan on finishing some of the many random projects for the 14th Grand Company so Chaos fans shouldn’t need to worry!

So it has been what, four months since I last posted, wow how the time flies. Various Real Life (TM*) things have kept me away from the painting table, including buying our very first house. Among the many upsides of getting the new house, the hobby related benefit is I get my own workspace! Currently there is not much too it as we are throwing our funds at other rooms, but I have a grand vision of putting more desk space than I know what to do with, display cabinets, and possibly a folding game table

So back to the irony of the title… When I starting getting back into the hobby 4ish years ago I was focusing on WFB and trying to decide on what race to do. I already had some of the old Lizardmen and Dark Elves, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to use them when there was all these new and exciting models to choose from. From a story perspective and throwing in the coolness factor, I had really wanted to do the Tomb Kings, but from a hobby perspective they weren’t quite there. But now…

From Games-Workshop.com, Used Without Permission

How could I not be inspired by all the cool new models! Although the last thing I need right now is more models to paint, but hopefully these guys will help me get back in the painting/playing spirit.

*Don’t remember which of you TM’d this but here is your credit

Just got back from the Tanksgiving event at the local GW store, and wow there were a lot of tanks there. One gent alone brought 200+ IG, Eldar and Tau tanks, walkers and a few Avatars. Although our store didn’t have the most in the region (two others had 1,000+!) we tallied up 800 tanks, walkers, large targets, monsters and supper heavies.

Now for some picts!

First up the growing tank arsenal of the 14th Grand Company:

Tanks of the 14th Grand Company

And Group Shot #1

And shot #2

And more tanks!

Sorry a few are a bit blurry, the camera was having some issues, but I think it gets the point across: a table full of tanks is crazy, but 4 tables full of tanks is crazier!

Also if you take a look at my tanks you get a peak of what is on my painting bench and been keeping me busy: 5 more Russes and a Chimera to bulk up my traitors!

Thanks goes out to 73rd for putting together A Tale of Even More Painters and adding me to the list. Although I am shooting for my own challenge deadline for completing 1,000 points by the end of the month, I look forward to 73rd’s challenges to keep me motivated past that point (painting 60+ guardsmen is tiring!) and providing interesting challenges to keep things fresh and enjoyable.

The first challenge is to have 75 points painted by the 17th. This should be very doable as I am planning on having my company command squad done by the end of this week, but you know how life goes, something always comes up. Speadking of which I will be spending most of next week out of town for work, oh well…

So my local GW store announced that next month’s painting challenge is for a 1,000 point army. I know I could easy submit my finished Iron Warriors, but where would the challenge be in that? Instead I see this as a excellent motivation for me to finish my traitor guard army! Well at least the core of it.

What does that mean for my painting schedule? Well I currently have one platoon (with two heavy weapon squads) done, so to get a legal army I still need to paint the other platoon and my company command squad. This would give me 1,000 points if I bulk out the squads with grenades and such, or I could really push my self and try to get my freshly built sentinels painted as well. Four weeks, 36 guardsmen and 4 sentinels, the math doesn’t really add up when I figure it took me over a month to paint the first platoon… but I could also pass that off as the warm up.

My plan is as such:

Week One: base coat both platoon squads and the platoon command squad

Week Two: Wash, highlight and finish the platoon as well as base coat the heavy weapon squads

Week Three: Wash, highlight and finish the heavy weapon squads and base coat, wash and highlight the company comand squad

Week Four: Paint the Sentinels and detail the command squad

This week is going to be a challenge though due to the fact it is in the upper 90s and I don’t have any air conditioning. Painting wise it creates the challenge of trying to finish a coat of paint before it dries out. Week 3 & 4 will be the big push, but with my wife out of town those two weeks I won’t have much else to do besides paint (and try to stay cool!).

So I realized I didn’t have the obligatory post of my workspace. I was reminded of this yesterday when my wife and I decided to redo the office/guest bedroom and I was kindly asked to remove my extra large desk and replace it with a much smaller version. The end result makes the room as a whole nicer looking and more function overall but I do fell a bit squeezed. The current projects on the desktop are my Manufactorum wall, Warsmith, and traitor platoon. Due to the smaller workspace I had to put the rest of the guard squads in the closet.

My New Cute Little Desk (NCLD)

The pull-out drawer for the keyboard has drawer organizers taped to it and filled of my most used supplies (namely paint and brushes).

Desk Drawer Full of Paints

The closet is where most of the supplies, materials, old projects, and boxes of new projects are kept.

The Closet of Goodness

So i’ve been a bit lax on this project (well at least posting on this project!) but I did get DISQUS added and working. DISQUS is a third party app that allows uses to easily comment at various sites while maintaining a single avatar.

I know I haven’t updated lately but I have been busy painting and building. Since my last update I have built another troop squad (this with 2 meltaguns), a Defiler, three Rhinos and 5 Terminators (it has been a while!). The troops are halfway painted, the defiler and rhinos are finished, and the terminators haven’t been primed. Any way I was looking back at my previous posts and most the pictures came out way too dark to see the details. When I bust the camera out for this next batch I will probably re-take some of the pictures.