Paint it or Punt it

What better way to close out this project than to paint more minis for one of my favourite games. I had the plastic Fellowship but through several ebay sales I managed to pick up a full set of the much nicer metals. My intention was always to strip them and get the Balin’s tomb display for them but it turns out that took quite some time to find at a reasonable price. With one in hand, or in the cupboard, excuses are over.

I’m a big fan of the Battle Streams in Middle Earth stream every fortnight and a few weeks ago was Gandalf week. The whole point of BSiME is to paint models you haven’t quite got round to. If you paint on theme for the week, you get entered into a draw for a highly prized, exclusive BSiME die. More importantly though, it’s just a bit fun to paint along.

Over the stream I managed to get Gandalf and a Galadriel done (she doesn’t count towards this project as she was only bought this year but it’s another mini from the backlog cleared). I’d forgotten how much I enjoy painting these minis. Especially the old metal sculpts. They are an absolute joy and yet not very time consuming. The bases aren’t finished because I need to mix up some flock for Galadriel to match the rest of my MESBG minis and I haven’t decided what to do with the Fellowship for their display tomb (I will not call it a plinth!).

I had started the 17 Judges from the last edition of the Judge Dredd miniatures game. I love Judge Dredd and these were a present from a friend so though they felt a little like an obligation, I was looking forward to them. They came primed black and I put down the green and some skin tones. It was around about this time I realised I wasn’t going to enjoy them as much as I thought. In fact, I really dislike them. Setting them aside wouldn’t be difficult and along came the chance to paint up the Imperial Fists for this project. Nor was not going back to them after the raffle was done.

Or the following two months.

October coming around and feeling a little better about my hobby, I decided to finish off everything I had primed and partly painted.

Putting on an audiobook and just pushing through the misery, I did eventually get them all done. Can’t remember the last time I enjoyed a bunch of models less but they are now DONE!

It’s been a few months since I posted here. I had every intention of completing the Spring Clean Challenge but the chance to raise some extra money for a worthy cause popped up and I dropped everything to go do it. Let’s catch up shall we?

The last of the Perry plastic French were split into two more stands and then some single based skirmishers. The idea is that one day they’ll get used for a skirmish ruleset Forager when a friend gets round to painting up his Rifles… I don’t know if that’ll ever happen but I did really enjoy painting these and I think they look pretty good. Not enough that I’d painted hundreds of them for a true Napoleonic army at 28mm but never say never.

Don’t have any photos of them but I also finished off the four Romans and over on my Frostgrave project I showed off finishing all the minis from the pile. That just leaves the Judge Dredd judges and the Fellowship (plus two B&B minis but I seem to have lost them somewhere. I suspect they’ve been kidnapped by the cats so who knows where I’ll find them).

Getting back into a bit of hobby the same way I started this project waaaaay back by painting up a few B&B miniatures.

SCC count: 5 down, 74 left to go

These are left over from a Kickstarter two years ago. The KS is a good way to pick up a bunch of fun painting projects but I haven’t gone in for the last few because I realised I wasn’t actually painting them. With only two left to do, I can look at the next KS without that guilt ?

Now then, what’s this, a post? On a sprawling, painfully slow to load project? Aye, I know, I didn’t think I was coming back here either. Honestly after January I thought I’d just break down the remainder of the paint queue and make separate projects for each of them.

Sometimes though I don’t sleep at night and that tends to play havoc with the strange little things I set my mind on. Thinking about the hobby plans for the rest of the year, I realised that this project need to finished before I can take those on guilt-free.

If only there was some sort of challenge that would help gamers with clearing out old projects

One of my main hobby goals for 2020 was to take back control of my collection. I felt a weird sense of guilt about the number of unpainted models I owned. Not a pile of opportunity or a heap of hope or whatever positive spin we are meant to put on it. Mine was most definitely a pile of shame. I frequently felt like I didn’t know where to start and would just not paint instead of having to face it all.

In January 2020, I had 1281 unpainted models in the pile. Over the 15 months I’ve painted 243 and sold or given away 850 or so. Heading into 2021, the push was towards 100% painted for everything that was on the spreadsheet… don’t worry about the actual maths, I’m a librarian not an accountant.

So let’s set out parameters shall we? It’s 30 days until the end of the Spring Clean Challenge and I have in my head a rough idea of what remains to be painted in the cupboard. Updating the spreadsheet gives us this wonderful looking set of totals

81.7% painted and 79 models either unpainted or unassembled. This includes all the changes brought by painting up Frostgrave, which I thought was going to be my SCC this year. What remains to be done for it is terrain based so I’m not bothered about that right now.

30 days and 79 models. That’s doable.

The breakdown:

Burrows and Badgers – 7

Judge Dredd – 17

Napoleonic French – 24

Romans – 4

Fellowship of the Ring – 9

Frostgrave – 18 (FG numbers actually a pain in the arse because I apparently wasn’t as good at tracking them as I thought I was being. I’ve definitely added to it this year but this is what is sitting to be painted, so that’s what I’m going with)

There are other models in the house that are unpainted right now. They’ve all been bought in the last couple of months as projects for once this was over. Am I saying I’ve got a wonderfully balanced relationship with my desire to buy models and actually getting them painted? Not in the slightest. I still have four separate projects I want to start but I’m being better about not buying things immediately and then sticking them in a darkened corner to waste.

There’s also a set of minis that I stripped for a painting challenge this month and then lost the energy for. If I manage them too then fantastic but it’s not something I’m going to beat myself up about it.

The story behind the Legion core box ties to last year’s snag-a-normie challenge. I went halfers on the box with a friend. We managed a build session and one short paint session before lock-down happened. I went ahead and painted my droid troops but left everything else untouched. Fast-forward to November and he admitted that he didn’t think he was interested in painting minis after all. So they got added into my pile of unpainted grey, not likely to be added to but possibly to be played with at a skirmish level in the future.

Painting clone troopers, I thought I’d try the Zorpazorp technique but after the first couple of stages they looked like crap so I went back to check I was following the video properly. Instead of watching it on my phone, I watched it on my PC screen and found out the flaw in my plan… I think the ones in the video look like crap too. That’s maybe not fair but they aren’t neat and tidy enough for my tastes so it was time to mount a rescue. Nothing needed stripped or anything crazy like that, just lines cleaned up, evidence of the drybrushing eradicated and many layers of thin white paint patiently applied.

After those were done it was time to move onto the Barc speeder. I wanted it to look different to the clones so went with a grey palette and some pretty heavy weathering. My friend confirmed he’d like them with 501^st colours so I went in and added the blue along the sides. Then went back and painted the clones. The sources for clone markings are all over the place and truthfully, it’s not my army so I don’t care. They are clearly 501^st, my job is done.

Next I finished up the droid side by painting the droidekas and then a fun little evening working on Grievous and Kenobi. Once everything was done, the horrible Geek Gaming Mars base ready mix got brought out so they match the other droids. Seriously, great idea for a product but it is a nightmare to work with. The pigment gets on everything and after sealing and touching up, it would have been faster going with any of the other methods I considered way back in March when I did the first lot of B1s.

With that, the Legion core box is finished. I won’t be jumping to paint more of either faction for now. I am tempted by building a Rebel force but truthfully it is such an expensive game that I just don’t know I’ll be able to justify it.

Time for a January wrap up. Plenty of progress and some self examination.

After I working through the Imperial Assault goal in December, I decided to try and lay out the rest of the collection to be painted as monthly targets. For January, I wanted to finish off what was in the Star Wars Legion core box, and paint up some odds and sods minis that somehow have taken up residence in my flat. I also wanted to get the last batches of eBay sales up and running.

I’ll do a separate post for the Star Wars Legion update but let’s cover some other things.

January stats:

Sold: 96 (plus 250 pending)

Painted: 37

Collection painted: 43.3%

Quick little section this one. Two cows and goat.

From Dust Tactics.

I shit you not.

I have no idea if these will ever get used but 100% painted is 100% painted! Painting these took so little time that I added in the gangers from Judge Dredd too. After so much white it was a joy to paint garish colours!

Adding these to the 4 Burrows and Badgers minis from the start of the month and the total painted for the month is 37. Painting up the rest of the Burrows and Badgers kickstarter is one of next month’s goals.

The last few lots went up on eBay and I was happy with that. Then I had a chat with a friend about his Legion collection. I was giving him a hard time about owning two of everything for all four factions. “You’ll never paint all that and you’ll never play that many armies” said I.

Of course, I am sitting in my own (albeit much smaller) glasshouse. I have 9 factions for Middle-Earth SBG. Nine!!! Not one of them is a complete army and I’ve only ever played small points games. Stones came crashing down on my head and so I decided that most of it has to go.

I’m keeping the two forces that I have painting everything I own for (the Pelennor Fields box) and for the meantime I’ll keep hold of the Minas Tirith that I painted last year though their place in the cabinet is precarious. I’m also going to keep one of the two Fellowship sets I have and in fact they are earmarked to be my Spring Clean Challenge project this year.

If I want to buy more MESBG then it makes much more sense to pick out specific units for the two armies I have and build them out rather than just buying shit cheaply on eBay. This decision also dramatically changes the outlook for the Paint it or Punt it challenge. Of the 500 odd miniatures that remained to be painted, nearly 300 of them were MESBG. Getting rid of them and planning out the remains to be painted up as monthly goals, I think I should get to 100% painted collection by May. Or at least the collection as it stood up until now but that’s a topic for a future post and possibly future project logs…

Finished one unit of 7 Clones. Not using unit markings (for the time being) because technically they aren’t mine.

The bases will match the droids when I’m done which means Geek Gaming Mars Earth basing material. It’s messy as heck though so I’m going to wait until probably the rest of the box is done before breaking that out.

The streams today were great and helped pass the time for painting white… thanks to the OTT crew for putting them on.

Don’t know why I thought painting white armour was the way to beat the Blues today! Slowly grinding these out though.

I started off using the Zorpazorp paint technique but I really didn’t like the look. Just too messy for my tastes.

So it’s back to many layers of thin coats but it’s starting to get there

With OTT’s Blue Monday streams happening, I decided to clear my work day yesterday so I could have a hobby day today.

Going to see if I can bash through all the minis ready to paint from the Star Wars Legion core set. A friend was going to be painting these up but decided he doesn’t like painting once he started half of them. I stripped them down and reprimed (accidentally a different base primer, Wraithbone instead of Corax). If I get through all of these I have Obi Wan and Grievous sitting next to me…

I’ve spent the first two weeks of the year working on terrain but this weekend marked the first time painting minis. The original plan was to finish up the Imperial Assault goal from December but I’ll be honest, I got bored painting the AT-STs.Instead, while updating the spreadsheet for the last post, Burrows and Badgers got in my mind as something nice to start the year with.

B&B minis are just a delight to paint. Simple and quick to block out without too much detail, it is just really satisfying to paint them. I decided to tackle something new for me, tartan. I know, I know… it’s embarassing that despite being Scottish and indeed being of one of the major historical clans, I’ve never tried painting tartan before. I couldn’t really get a good photo on my phone but I’m happy with the result. It was a very simple base and two colours for the check.

I also realised as I finished up painting that I don’t have notes about my basing scheme for the other B&B minis that I did in the past. I used to be so carefree and had so much more faith in my memory.

Thankfully when I went into the RUB with my flocks in it, I found and unlabelled box of flock that I clearly made from other types… No idea what is in it but it is the right mix so fingers crossed there is enough to finish off all the remaining B&B minis! Don’t be like me kids, be organised and give your future self a break. Take notes.

First 4 miniatures of the year done.

I’ve spent a few hours today going through models I know snuck their way into the flat since the last time I did a spreadsheet update so that I can start the second year of this project on an honest footing… sort of.

A couple of cheap ebay pick ups mean that total model count went up in Q4 having gone down for the previous 3 quarters of 2020.

There was shiny syndrome as usual in the form of the Khorne Daemons getting expanded. I’ve changed my mind about them and will be moving them on to fund future projects.

I’ve earmarked the last batch of things to be sold off. Then it is time to get back into painting.

At the start of the project last year my aims were simple: get my collection under control and stop kidding myself about games that I was never going to go back to.

The collection shrank from 1281 to 755 (-526). Painting % went from 8.8% to 32.9% thanks to Painting and Punting.

Games I got rid of everything for in alphabetical order

• Age of Sigmar
• Dust
• Guild Ball
• Infinity
• Kill Team
• 40K

There were some unfinished armies that moved on with the intention that new ones will replace them for the same game (mainly Kings of War).

The biggest loser was GW – I love the quality of their models but increasingly I’ve no interest in playing their games, the rules just don’t do it for me. Over the year I came to realise I have turned into one of those people who just reads the fiction. Other than MESBG, I don’t think there will be many GW purchases in my future.

The main result for me was beginning to question far more my motivations for buying models. I didn’t play a game at all in the whole of 2020 but have been working with the mindset of Beyond Covid. Getting back to my local club, GW isn’t played so thankfully I won’t be missing out.

The main aim for the Paint or Punt Project remains working towards 100% painted. Breaking it down to smaller goals looks like this for at least the first half of the year:

1. Of the 520 models that remain unpainted, 279 are MESBG because it is extremely easy to pick up cheap ebay armies. If I can get half of the factions completely painted I’ll be happy (currently 2 out of 9)
2. Burrows and Badgers to 100%
3. Finish painting the Star Wars Clone Wars core box now that I have inherited the painting responsibilities for all of it instead of just my half.
4. Judge Dredd 100%. These were given to me by a friend who was clearing out his own collection a couple of years ago and I’d really like to get them into the display cabinet
5. Frostgrave. With the intention of playing through the solo campaigns and scenarios at some point, it would be nice to have it mostly painted up.

One of the things not curently in the spreadsheet is my Mantic project. As I said above, I have intended to get a new KoW army since early last year and that remains a big part of this year’s hobby goals. This has been added to because Armada looks like my jam and I have some models on the way for it already.

Mantic will get it’s own project in the future but it’s numbers will be part of quarterly reviews.

Right, I think that’s enough rambling for now. I suppose I better get to painting…

Somehow it is 2021. I’m not going to flog the 2020 horse but obvisouly I haven’t updated this project since the summer so it is time for a quick recap. After July I didn’t really paint anything and lost interest in most of the hobby again. I didn’t even log in here. I spent time on RPGs with friends but mostly just played video games and watched movies. Time well wasted as the expression goes though not progress towards my project goals.

At the start of December I decided to fire myself back into the hobby side by doing a reasonably sized mini project that ties into another 2021 goal – playing more of my solo games. My Imperial Assault collection is limited to the core box and a handful for the character expansions so with only 48 miniatures it felt like an achievable goal in a month. I didn’t get to the two AT-STs but everything else got done.

I haven’t updated my spreadsheet since the summer either and though there isn’t much change, I did find some extra miniatures in random boxes so I’ll add them in over the next few days. I started the new year by giving the glass cabinet a good dust so I figured why not take photos of everything painted over the last two years.

In 2019 I completed 104 models and in 2020 I finished 155. Seeing the numbers written down like that, I’m happy but knowing how big the gaps in my hobby time were, clearly it could have been substantially more than that. I’m trying to go easy on myself about I still really want to work towards 100% painted in the next couple of years. I’m going to start the year by finishing off a couple of models to close out a couple of smaller projects and then I’ll pick what takes my fancy.

Another batch of Minas Tirith warriors done in the last week. This was a smaller group, just 15 of them but represents all of the spear and shield models in the collection.

By the end of them, fatigue had started to kick in with the paint scheme so I’m giving myself a couple of weeks off. I’ve worked out that to finish all of my currently owned MESBG minis by the end of the year, I need to get through 12 a week.

Looking through what’s left for something a little different to paint I found all the Rivendell elves (from the Last Alliance) and so they are in Dettol with a test model done.

I know very little about Napoleonics and as I have said before this box was bought to act as a palate cleanser. I’m thoroughly enjoying painting them and over the last couple of days finished another 12 to give me three bases. There’s still the same again to be painted but I’ll be putting them aside for a few weeks as I work on more Minas Tirith warriors and the next part of my Khorne army.

I’m struggling to get hobby done right now – there’s been a pigeon trapped in a cavity wall for six days now and it can’t be saved. The volume of noise makes concentrating on anything difficult. Joined up thinking is aspirational at best.

I started these Perry French a month or two ago and I’m really enjoying painting them. The lighting makes the grey coats look the same colour as the trousers but I swear there is a difference! The idea is just to bash out three at a time when I have a gap or need a change.

They are very clean looking and the basing isn’t finished but it just gave me a little lift today.

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.