Just being able to fit it into a work evening basically.

When I go to the local club for a game I have to leave work half an hour early to make sure I can get home and get some dinner before I head out agin to be at the club just after six.

Other nights in the week I don't have as much free time in the evening as after we've put our daughter to bed and had our dinner it's normally about 7:30-ish so by the time space has been made for the gaming table, my opponent has arrived and unpacked his army we're probably looking at starting to play around 8 (well, probably a bit later given the opponent in question).

So basically it's about finding a points level that will be reasonably quick to play yet still give some variety. We'd tried 500 points with the Border Patrol rules previously but as I run High Elves that points level doesn't give much room for list variety. I'd heard the hosts of Ohiohammer talking about how they play 1000 point games so we decided to give that level a try.

In terms of playing time the game lasted about an hour, so for people who actually play a bit quicker than us it could probably be done in about 45 minutes.

Just to make a bit of a change I'll actually post some pictures.

Unfortuantely not of anything I painted. As I had to look after the first born on Tuesday I decided to take her in to the office to see the people I work with as I've not taken her in previously. As I work in Nottingham and Warhammer World isn't that far away from where I work I decided to take a walk over there as I'd never been before.

Mainly my goal was to have a look around the miniatures gallery which did go reasonably well as the little 'un fell asleep while we were walking there (helped no doubt by the fact that I didn't take another look at the route on Google maps before we set off and so ended up walking a longer way round than I'd planned). If I go again I'll probably make sure I go with an aim in mind of what I want to look at as I wasted a bit of time looking at stuff that comes on round bases before getting onto the proper stuff. Not that I dislike the 40k models but I was hoping to see something to inspire me with directions I take my painting in future.

Anyway, a break for some pictures before any more rambling:

Some type of Dreadnought I believe




Dreadknight




Chaos Dragon








Empire Character on Griffon




Saurus Oldblood on Carnosaur




Kermit




Dead Kermit




Arachnarok




Orc Character on Boar






High Elf Mage on Dragon




High Elf Mage




Skaven Doomflayer




Grand Theogonist Volkmar



Unfortunately, despite having the gallery to ourselves for most the time we were there, just as I was half way along the Fantasy side some more people came in (think they might have been new employees being shown around from what I heard of their conversation) and the little one woke up a couple of minutes later which stopped me being able to spend as much time on the Fantasy models as I'd hoped.

Overall the gallery was interesting although I'd expected it would be bigger than it was - I was hoping they'd have larger armies on display (and for some reason Orcs and Goblins appeared to have a whole display cabinet to themselves while all the other armies had just two shelves in them). Also, the lighting in some of the cabinets meant it was hard to get decent photos of parts of some of the models due to reflections or the angles putting parts in shadow.

As for the rest of my time there I took a look round the main playing area which was a bit odd as at first it seemed small than I expected, at least until I did a quick count up of the number of tables. The shop was definitely a disappointment though as I was expecting them to have far more of the range out on the shelves and racks.

I love Warhammer world, the locals are spoilt!

D

Ok everyone, try not to die of shock, but here's an actual picture of stuff I'm working on at the moment.

However, a word of warning, after my last post, please be prepared to be disappointed by the standard of painting...


So, these are two of the Archers I'm working on at the moment



I'm currently redoing the Archers I'd had painted up to bring them in line with the most up-to-date version of my paint scheme. As you can probably spot from the armour, they're not all up to the same standard as yet - I had hoped to get the armour plate bits done this weekend but a broken boiler and living room door falling off its hinges, plus the usual weekend chores have got in the way. Also, despite what it may look like in the photo, there's no shading or highlight on the blue cloth, everything in the photo is from room lighting only. I wasn't happy with how I'd painted the cloth up previously - particularly with the highlights I'd done - so have resolved to redo it.

What this photo hopefully shows (unfortuantely it's the best of a rather blurry bunch courtesy of poor evening light in the lounge) is the two different ways I'm painting the hair at the moment. I've decided to do a couple of different colours at the moment so that even with the mono-pose models it's not quite a monotonus colour when viewing units from the back. At the moment these just have a layer of colour (Vomit Brown and Snakebiter Leather respectively), a couple of applications of wash and then a relayering of the original colour. At present I'm not sure whether it's worth my time trying to find an additional colour for each or not or how best to apply it if I do (the two models shown are the best examples of this so far... quite a few are a bit poorer due to getting the lines too thick).

So, that's where things are at the moment. I'm considering coming up with a third hair colour although I probably wouldn't be looking to apply that to any of the models in progress at the moment (I've got plenty of unpainted Archers (and Spearmen, and Dragon Princes, and Chariots... etc etc) to apply to and mix in later).

There are some really cool pics up there. Definitely things to aspire too.

Simon,

Did you consider a foundation brown? Dunno of you have found coverage a problem but the foundation might be easier/quicker to work with.

D

Can't say I found coverage a particular problem. The only issue I had is that my pot of Vomit Brown appears to be very watery straight out of the pot

cerebros wrote:Can't say I found coverage a particular problem. The only issue I had is that my pot of Vomit Brown appears to be very watery straight out of the pot

I've got a few GW paints which I've had this problem with, I've found a fairly helpful little trick I use to make my paints thicker for drybrushing on basing which you can apply universally for making paints less watery which works wonders:
Put a thin layer of PVA on your palette/tile/whatever, let it dry completely, then put your paint on this for about 20secs (depending on how thin it is or how thick you need it) before putting it back on your brush and using it on the model; the dry pva sucks out some of the moisture.

It's not for everyone but I find it useful.

Asides from that the HE are looking nice and clean, maybe a wash on the brown bags would give them a bit more depth.

Keep up the good work, and your warhammer world pictures are of outstanding quality; I'll never tire of that orc warlor on boar

Byronic wrote:I've got a few GW paints which I've had this problem with, I've found a fairly helpful little trick I use to make my paints thicker for drybrushing on basing which you can apply universally for making paints less watery which works wonders:
Put a thin layer of PVA on your palette/tile/whatever, let it dry completely, then put your paint on this for about 20secs (depending on how thin it is or how thick you need it) before putting it back on your brush and using it on the model; the dry pva sucks out some of the moisture.

It's not for everyone but I find it useful.

Might be something to try, although probably not the easiest thing for me to apply at work (the spare draw of my desk is already full of my paints and models I have

Byronic wrote:Asides from that the HE are looking nice and clean, maybe a wash on the brown bags would give them a bit more depth.

When I finally get the metal and cloth (and probably skin) re-done I'm planning to put a wash on the bags/straps and probably a highlight as well

Byronic wrote:Keep up the good work, and your warhammer world pictures are of outstanding quality; I'll never tire of that orc warlor on boar

Yeah, he's one of the models whose pose works really well in a picture

Quick summary of my 2011 and what I'm hoping to achieve in 2012...

2011

Gaming:
With the missus going back to work I've not had as much chance for getting games in as I used to. At best I've managed to get a couple of games a month in at the club but on a few occasions it's just beeen one because something's come up that has stopped me or my opponent making it down. I've also not managed to get as many casual games in outside of the club as I'd hoped.

In tournament gaming I won 2 games at every singles tournament I went to, although those victories were more down to lack of experience or bad luck on my opponent's part than any tactical brilliance on mine. Due to a lack of funds I didn't end up going to either the Mansfield Maul or Winter Incursion which I had been planning to earlier in the year, so in the end it was just the five tournaments for me (Open Side event, Rushden Rumble, Summer Incursion, Midlands Open and Milton Keynes Massacre).

Painting/Modelling:

I really struggled to drum up enthusiasm for painting at several times this year, not helped by dad passing away which meant I was having to do stuff to prep for the Summer Incursion when I really wasn't in the mood for it. I started out the year intending to paint up a unit of Sea Guard for use at the Summer Incursion onwards but only got so far before deciding I wasn't playing enough games to figure out a list including them and so decided to stick more to what I know.

I totally failed in one of the resolutions I'd set myself for the year, which was to paint up around 2000 points of the army to finished standard. I seem to have spent most of the year trying to get some of the stuff I'd first painted up to the same standard and scheme I'd sorted out towards the end of 2010.

I'd also been hoping to get some of my scenery built and painted before the end of the year but despite making some progress with building and gap-filling on my Watchtower I'm yet to even get that undercoated.


2012

For this coming year I'm going to have to lower my expectations of what I can achieve this year due to lack of money and time (unfortunately a fair bit needs doing around the house and as DIY jobs seem to take at least three times as long to do as I think they should I'm not counting on having much hobby time).

Painting/Modelling:

Realistically I want to set myself the goal of getting 1 piece of scenery painted up during the year. I also want to try and get most of the models I'm currently using painted up to the same standard so I can then think about moving them on to a finished standard. Unfortunately that may mean having to redo a number of my metal Sword Masters and my White Lions when originally I'd planned on selling them off and moving to all plastic models

Gaming

After having scored 2 wins at every singles event (regardless of circumstances of those wins) I was hoping to target get 3 wins in at least one event in 2012 but to be honest I'm just not getting in enough games to get the experience of playing different armies to even contemplate that - having looked at my game record spreadsheet (yes, sad I know) since coming back to Warhammer in 2008(?), except for Empire and Orcs & Goblins, I haven't played any army more than 10 times and most only a handful.

So really my aim this year is to just try and get more games in. I'd actually like to run a different army for a while, although this will just end up proxying an army down the club as I don't have the money, and definitely don't have the time, to sort out another army (really regretting deciding to do the joint Skaven army with the missus as at the moment neither of us has the money to spend on getting more models for it, never mind assembling and painting it up).

Tournament-wise I'm only definitely planning to do two at the moment - Polish Sausage (which should see the Leicester SQUIGs out in force unless anyone has cooled on the idea of going since we were discussing it at the club) and the Summer Incursion. Owing to the lack of funds and time I don't think I'm going to be able to do any other 2-day tournaments this year and will probably have to over come my dislike of 1-day 3 game events assuming I can get to any. (Will also try and get to some of the Milton Keynes events if I can).