Gorram's Grand Army Project

I’ve always had a grand vision for big painted armies in my collection. Boxes of neatly painted, fully based little soldiers ready to go for anything. The reality is that I have armies, they just aren’t painted. Recently re-reading my copy of Armies & Legions & Hordes has inspired me to get my thumb out my arse and starting putting in more effort. Having painted up my some of my Children of the Hydra’s Teeth, I know I can do batch painting, I just need to actually do it instead of thinking about it. For this project an “army” is more than 50 miniatures.

The armies I know that I have in the stash, a mixture of part-painted and completely untouched, in no particular order is as follows:

1. Early-Mid Imperial Romans
2. Children of the Hydra’s Teeth
3. Nac Mac Feegle army for Kings of War
4. Vikings
5. Turnip 28
6. WW2 28mm British
7. WW2 15mm Flames of War Americans and Germans
8. ACW 6mm Confederates
9. 40k/sci-fi Orks
10. 40k/sci-fi Nids old plastics
11. 40k/sci-fi Nids new plastics
12. 10mm Ratmen
13. 6mm Star Wars
14. 10mm dwarves (3d printed)
15. two other Kings of War armies

There may be other in there but these are the ones I remember for right now. Obviously that’s a lot of work, it represents over 2000 minis of various scales. This isn’t my only project either, there will be other things I want to work on and I’ll need stuff that takes me away from the monotony of batch painting. There will be other 3d printed projects. Plus a secret one I’m working on for next summer. I’m not putting a rough timeline on the project then but I want it to be something I am actively tackling.

As for how I’m prioritising them, one army has a chance of getting played with “soon” as there are some other people in my local area who are working on armies themselves and so first up will be The Tattie Bogles, my Turnip28 army. Unless I get a ticket for a tournament next year in which case I’ll need to get cracking on an army for that instead.

Is this the start of my transformation into a painting machine? Doubtful but hopefully it is the start of turning my collection into something closer to my dream and less a nightmarish hoard or grey and silver.