Friday, June 5, 2015

Choosing the Path

Looking at a mountain of unpainted minis and terrain pieces can be daunting, especially when you are as slow and persnickety about painting as I am.  Without breaking the whole into smaller, more manageable chunks, I can feel overwhelmed or somewhat depressed about it.  I begin to question everything and nothing gets done.  Where do I start?  What can I really accomplish?  Is there any point to this?  Those negative thoughts are counterproductive, at the very least, or paralyzing at worst.

However, instead of falling into that old pattern and wasting hours staring at a closet full of minis, I recently evaluated the games I want to play.  Some playtesting and knocking around with rule books and websites showed I still have a strong interest in Malifaux.  A little playtesting of Sedition Wars showed it is not a great game, but not a terrible one, either.  It has potential to be pretty good, with some house rules and tinkering.  Warlord (Reaper) may seem like a dead game to a lot of people, but with Bones it becomes affordable and quick to paint.  Family and I enjoy it, and friends have expressed interest, too.  So, maybe there will be some painting for that, soon.  Besides, I have a Closet of Shame  Vault of Glory with slightly more than a few fantasy minis inside, most primed and ready for paint.  I might as well get started on them, right?

The next step was to look for specific minis for the games.  Crews, factions, warbands…call them what you will.  Then terrain pieces.  Nothing major, as I can’t afford full terrain tables or store them.  Just looking for lots of small pieces to quickly vary the layout of the dining room table.  Lining up all these models and pieces took some time, and resulted in finding more than I can hope to complete in the next six months.  So, I broke things down further, into those manageable chunks or projects that can be completed, checked off for making forward progress, and earn a new Joker now and then.

Here is how it stacks up so far:

NOT a project – I haven’t touched a brush since April, so Kara in Gnosis Armor for Sedition Wars is a single mini I really would like to finish and close out the Vanguard models from the original boxed game.  Here she is at the moment:



NOT a project – an old Grenadier dragon, I believe called the Guardian, is a piece I started a long time ago for my daughter.  Primed in terra cotta, and recently airbrushed three shades of red.  This is the last of the bench riders I want to see completed before moving on to real 6MMRPC projects.



PROJECT 1 – Malifaux Arcanists, adding to my Colette crew and bringing in a few mercenaries from Outcasts and Neverborn.  All sixteen models are either primed or have a little paint on them.  For painting purposes only, I am counting the Coryphee Duet as two models.  Although they will be on one large base, they are separate models, each with its own paint scheme.





PROJECT 2 – General terrain and two western buildings for Malifaux.


 


PROJECT 3 – Sedition Wars terrain box, which is seventy (70!) pieces of hard plastic.  Even with rattle-can priming and some airbrush work, that group will take a while (said the man with a keen sense of the obvious).  With the Vanguard completed, and the Strain based, primed and playable for now, I thought painting up the terrain would enhance the games and maybe give me extra motivation to work on the Strain.  Maybe by Zombtober...?




That is the early round-up, planned out, with a good variety and pace.

4 comments:

  1. "Vault of Glory", that is brilliant! Your first paragraph sounded exactly like me at my painting desk - best of luck with the challenge!

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  2. That model of Kara looks great - love the colour choice!

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  3. A wise man once said, "Paint something. Anything. Be it a sword, a horse, or just a part of it...and eventually you will reach the end of your mountain of lead".

    Paraphrased from - "A journey of a thousand miles begins with 1 step" or some zen rubbish like that.

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  4. Thank you, I appreciate that. Sorry for the delayed reply, here. @Ivor - Vault of Glory just sounded so much more positive, so I stuck with it. @Hatter - thanks, it's based on/inspired by/stolen from Angel Giraldez's studio paint scheme. @Spiderweb - I use that 'Zen rubbish' all the time, and I like your paraphrase.

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