Christmas is coming...

With Christmas just around the corner a wargamer turns to such thoughts as.... so what projects will I start over this holiday and not get finished! At least I do anyway. Its been a long year and I am really looking forward to Christmas as an opportunity to (hopefully) finish off some projects that have been sitting in my WIP list for way too long and with three weeks off this could be my chance.

Top of the list has to be my Dystopian Wars Prussian fleet. I made such great progress on them earlier in the year (and they are easy to paint), but they have been a challenge to find the enthusiasm to kick start again. Worst of all Spartan Games keep putting out more great looking ships (oh the hardship).

Next is my French EW Compagnie de Chasseurs Portes. These are Confident Trained guys running round in armoured halftracks and they look super cool. I've got a pile of Evan's new sculpts (which are perfect for these guys as they don't have the greatcoats) and I am working on a test stand now. Of course I have to have the army finished for Battlecry in February 2012.

I've signed up to do an article for the website looking at how to enhance the new range of Desert Buildings, so now that its in print I guess I had better make sure I get that done over the break. Mike put together an awesome article for WI about the tweaks you can make to really make the Desert Terrain range pop, so I plan on stealing a few of his ideas. As a bonus the terrain will work well for Force on Force too!

Speaking of Force on Force... I'd really like to finish my US Marines. Now that I have a paint scheme I am happy with, and know I can knock them out really quickly I would like to put a tick in that box.

Next up... eBaldur for Warmachine. Sean, Victor and I have to defend out Warmachine Teams Tournament record (last.... but we did it in the nicest possible way) and we are all bringing along Hordes forces this year. There is a great article about converting Megalith (eBaldur's best friend) and making him look a little more natural so I am guessing I'll need to take a look at that. I'll be using Equinox in mid March as my test event prior to the teams tourney.

Last project on the list is to finish assembling and painting some Perry Miniatures American Civil War buildings. These look great (although can be a little fiddly to put together) and will do nicely for some Wild West action next year. I've got plenty of barrels and fences as well so we should be able to have a good gun fight or two, with plenty of obstacles to hide behind.

Phew.... that's a lot of stuff! And of course somewhere in there I need to fit in all the chores around the house that my wife will be expecting. Thank goodness I managed to resist purchasing The Old Republic or I would have never gotten anything done.

And on the lighter side, looks like Sean has been up to his old tricks again...

WIP Week - The Results

So last week I made an effort to look through all my "In progress" projects and see if I could push each one of the forward and reignite the interest that made me start them in the first place. Surprisingly it was a success... so much so that I think next year I will do it again. Whilst some may say that splitting my attention over a bunch of projects meant that nothing with finished, to my mind it meant that something got done, and in a couple of cases I either came dangerously close to finishing the projects, or found the impetus to push on with them in the near future.

I thought I would show off two of my "successful" WIP Week projects:

Rasputina and her Malifaux gang - I've previously shown photos of her "friends" and over the weekend I finished the lady herself. I have 1 figure left to do and then 100% of my Malifaux stuff is painted. With a bit of luck I'll get that done over this coming long weekend.

Force on Force US Marines - as I mentioned before I have some cool 20mm figures from Elheim and thanks to the painting guide in one of their books, I managed to knock this test Fire Team out in an hour or two over the course of a couple of nights. They are a little rough in places but they are perfectly good for my needs... and given I need to paint another 30-40 Marines and a bunch of opposition guys I'm pretty happy with the final result.

Where too from here? I need to work on an Italian Garrison force for our Iron Painter event at FlamesCon 2011 in a month, so I need to get them cleaned up and based over the next few weeks. I am going to order the rest of my Marines today or tomorrow... and now that I know how quickly I can do them I am pretty inspired. Lastly I am going to make some Ice Columns for Rasputina, I just need to buy a set of the GF9 Battlefield in a Box Ice Crystals and away we go!

WIP Week - Force on Force: US Marines

I've been sitting on these really nice figures from Elheim for a couple of months now and slowly amassing some diecast 1/72 pre-painted vehicles that I thought it was about time to put some paint on the figures and check out how hard they would be to paint. One of the Force on Force books has a quick method for painting them that I am trying out this weekend, just need to pick up some GW Devlan Mud tomorrow (why is it that every paint guide you read these days recommends Devlan Mud... is it this decades GW Chestnut Ink?) and give the figures a quick wash before moving on to some of the detail work.

The figures themselves are really nice (although the editing of this photo is a bit rubbish) and I have mounted them on small washers, with rare earth magnets glued in the hole of the washer, to make storage and transport a little easier.

Marine Fire Team ready for undercoating.

Mike has set me the task of getting Rasputina and the December Acolyte ready for a game at lunch on Monday, and I would like to get this first team finished as well. Normally this would not be a big problem but I understand that there is a 5x XP weekend on World of Tanks... :)

Sorsha goes to Guardcon?

Okay, so many many weeks ago I thought I would paint up a Menoth Battlebox to take to Guardcon (which is a Battlebox tournament) but things conspired against me and a general lack of enthusiasm on the brushes (at least for anything bigger than very small ships - more on that later) resulted in the Kreoss and his boys being assembled, undercoated, and some base colours put on before I decided to call it quits. So up stepped Sorsha.... given the fact that I have a Juggernaut and Destroyer already done this was definitely the easy option and I completed her over the course of a weekend. I'm not happy with how the face turned out so I will have another crack at that next week, but for now she is heading to Guardcon.

Sorsha in her natural environment

Meanwhile I have also been distracted by a pile of little ships (although this turned up in the post today!). I am just waiting for some decals to arrive from Dom's Decals so I can finish off my first batch of Dystopian Wars ships (that an I need a favour from a friend with a laser cutting machine!), but I'll have pictures of them up next week assuming the decals arrive. 

Metzger Class Robot

I also played a very quick test game of Force on Force yesterday. Predictably the US Marines played by Phil managed to clean up the small unit of insurgents hiding in the town, but a lucky burst of fire caught one fire team moving in the open, killing 1 marine and heavily wounding another. It was a good lesson in how quick and nasty the game can be... definitely enthused to get some figures painted over the Christmas break - although there are way too many things that I am planning to paint over this period already so it might be a bit of a rough time on the paint brushes.