Bit of a mid point update.

After a bit of deliberation and getting a sample of my units' painting standard checked out, I bought a ticket for the Blood and Glory tournament in September.

This does present something of a challenge. As those of you who've been following this blog will know, I've been working on a bunch of Sword Masters and Archers since the start of the year (or even just before). For the tournament in September I definitely need to finish off about 12 of those Archers and, if I find the time, I ideally want to be able to get the Sword Masters up to scratch so I don't need to use my metal Sword Masters that aren't painted to the best standard I'm currently capable of. Unfortunately I think I've still got a fair bit of work to do on some of the plastic Sword Masters I'm currently using in games to ensure they're of a suitable standard.

Aside from those I need to get four Island of Blood Ellyrian Reavers painted up to round out my unit (in the past I've run four old metal models with my converted musician) and a Loremaster of Hoeth finished off. Oh, and also I need to sort some terrain out. From the pack I need a hill, wood, building plus one other piece (either water feature, wall or impassible terrain). Woods and hills I'm sorted for and I've got either my Watchtower or Dreadstone Blight for the building (although both need painting) but the other piece I'm going to need to sort out from somewhere.

So far, by my reckoning, I think I should probably be getting an 11 or 12 on the painting scores.

As usual, there's not going to be plain sailing ahead. For starters, I'm not going to get as many practice games in as I'd have hoped. I thought I'd got six games between now and then but next week's club night is the club AGM so I'm not going to get a game in (or certainly not a 2400 point game depending how long the meeting runs) and there's rail works for a month across the end of this month and August which means I'm probably not going to be able to get to two club nights in time to get a 2400 point game in. So I'm looking at three practice games.

This is somewhat annoying as at the moment I'm trying out a Loremaster and Level 4 High Magic Archmage but I've a sneaking suspicion I might be better served by a Level 4 Shadow and Level 4 Metal. It would also save me a bit of painting as I have two mages painted.

The rail works also mean I'm going to have less time in the evenings for painting which might well make things a bit tight. All in all it's a bit frustrating really as with the models I'm painting at the moment I want to make sure they're taken to as close to final standard as possible rather than rushing them for the tournament. It's for that reason that they've not been stuck to their bases yet as I was planning to get all painting of the bases done to completion before sticking the models on, to stop me having to worry about having to touch up the models where my paint brush goes awry (as I'm going to have to do with the majority of my current plastics).

And just to end on a slightly more depressing note... A few weeks ago I did something you should probably never do as a wargamer - I actually do a full inventory of all my models. Well, technically not all my models, just the plastics (as I'm planning to ditch my metals once I've got enough plastics to replace them with). By my calculations I've got 450 models which equates to 6909 points worth (assuming all character models are used as the lowest cost version of themselves). Of those points I think I've got a shade over 2600 points that should be usable going on a 3 colour minimum, although there's a lot that would possibly fall down on the consistency of the paint job depending on just how far paid up a member of the Fascist Painting Police a painting judge was.

cerebros wrote:And just to end on a slightly more depressing note... A few weeks ago I did something you should probably never do as a wargamer - I actually do a full inventory of all my models. Well, technically not all my models, just the plastics (as I'm planning to ditch my metals once I've got enough plastics to replace them with). By my calculations I've got 450 models which equates to 6909 points worth (assuming all character models are used as the lowest cost version of themselves). Of those points I think I've got a shade over 2600 points that should be usable going on a 3 colour minimum, although there's a lot that would possibly fall down on the consistency of the paint job depending on just how far paid up a member of the Fascist Painting Police a painting judge was.

To be honest given how long you've been plugging away at these guys I'm astounded you've not got more painted than that, now I realise you're ignoring some of the painted metals but I can't help but feel you're over complicating your painting process that it's taking so long! As Wayne pointed out on the latest episode if you get the right speed painting techniques going it should be possible to churn out an army in about a month of concerted effort.

Regarding the FPP, that's just a horrendous misnomer, the standard at events where that came about was very basic and it's just that they were the first group to start enforcing paint scores in a realistic way. To be honest anyone failing to hit the bare minimums they required really do deserve a hit. I've not looked at the Bad Dice paintscores but based of what Ben was saying on the cast there are a number of very easy points to pick up and just a small amount of effort will get you up close to the max score. I do think it's slightly flawed in having an expectation for conversions counting for a reasonably large chunk of the score, I could convert models and have them look worse than stock, but it's very rarely any of the painting points on the checklist will do that, but seeing as I can probably pick up full points without the conversion stuff then I'm not all that fussed.

Dave wrote:To be honest given how long you've been plugging away at these guys I'm astounded you've not got more painted than that, now I realise you're ignoring some of the painted metals but I can't help but feel you're over complicating your painting process that it's taking so long! As Wayne pointed out on the latest episode if you get the right speed painting techniques going it should be possible to churn out an army in about a month of concerted effort.

But Wayne was talking more from the point of view of Skaven where you can achieve a lot with a basecoat (and especially spray basecoats) and dip.

And how many hours is a months worth of concerted effort? If I had a month of doing nothing but painting I probably could roughly clean up, build and paint an army to a basic tournament standard assuming I worked out a paint scheme beforehand. But I can only generally be sure of getting about ten hours of painting time a month through painting during my lunch break - and obviously that's including time to set up and clean up so probably I'm looking more at 8.5 hours actual painting time in small chunks which is always going to be less productive than larger chunks.

It also doesn't help that I've been chopping and changing what's been on the painting table rather than seeing units through to completion (e.g. the unit of Sea Guard I started painting up planning to take to tournaments last year and then abandoned when I realised I wasn't going to have the time to finish them before any of the events I was planning to go to) so I've got lots of stuff part done that's not quite at minimum tournament painting standard.

So the monthly update...

At the moment I'm quite pleased with the amount of progress I've been managing to make on the Archers I've been working on at work (although in part that's because I'm having to use up flexi-time accrued ahead of the end of that policy at work so I'm taking longer lunch breaks to use up the time) to the point that I'm starting to think I may have time to get more of my Island of Blood Sword Masters up to scratch before Blood and Glory so I can drop the dodgily painted metals (although I'd still have the old White Lions in letting the side down)

I've also managed to find time in the evenings to get a fair bit done on my Ellyrian Reavers, although any thoughts I'd had on best order in which to paint the parts of these from when I did my musician have been forgotten so I'm having to relearn the lessons for when I find time to paint a second unit of them. I am wondering though why, when I was converting an Island of Blood Ellyrian Reaver into a musician, I didn't base it from the champion model instead of one of the rank and file model, especially since I can't imagine ever using an Ellyrian champion (or, come to that, a standard bearer since that option is still in the army book).

After thinking further on my model audit I've decided that, when I've finally got my plastic White Lions painted up to the point I can ditch the metals, I'm going to sell on a lot of the excess Core units I've got. Much though I like the idea of having a really big points game, these days I'm struggling to get any sort of game in, never mind some sort of mega battle so other than having enough of each type of Core to cover around 450 - 600 points worth I think I can sell on the rest and still have enough to allow me to vary my lists.

Speaking of games, I did manage to get a 1600 point game in last Friday. I decided to go a bit experimental and try a couple of Skycutters with bolt throwers (while I'm deeply sceptical about the utility of the Skycutters I want to give them a go to see if there's anything I'm missing from a first assessment). Unfortunately, the points I had to find to fit them in meant that I dropped my second White Lion unit, leaving me only the other (now slightly larger thanks to the spare points I ended up with) White Lions in which to bunker my General and BSB. Who promptly lost the first combat of the game and got run down in turn 2 by a Knights and Demigryphs. Surprisingly one of the Skycutters managed to hold out against the Knights for two rounds of combat before being destroyed but in the end the game was over at the end of turn 3. I'm planning to save any more experiments with Skycutters until I can put them in a 2400 point list.

Slightly ahead of schedule here's my next update.


I've made a fair bit of progress on the Archers now with only a few steps left to do. The Reavers and Loremaster of Hoeth are also coming along at a reasonable speed too.

I may have been a bit hasty in my assessment of having plenty of time to get some extra stuff done before Blood and Glory thanks to the delays in my homeward commute due to the rail works going on at the moment. As I'm getting home anywhere between forty-five minutes to an hour later (assuming there aren't any additional delays on the trains I'm having to get instead).

At the moment I'm trying to figure out if there's anything I can take with me to work on when we go camping next week as otherwise that's a wasted week with no progress. Unfortunately I'm struggling to think of anything I could get away with taking with me - ideally I'd like to take my Dreadstone Blight to get started on but being scenery it'd be too big to pack away with all the other stuff.

Loremaster of Hoeth




Ellyrian Reavers
(Although I took this photo on Saturday I've actually got a fair bit more done on these since)

Doh. After pulling out the Sword Masters I started working on earlier in the year and sorting out a couple of paints I should able to apply I've just realised, now it's too late, I forgot to put them in the car this morning.

Oh, not sure if it's some quirk of my mobile browser or not but the picture above of the Reavers seems to be missing the right hand side. Will try to remember to investigate when I get back

At the moment it feels like work is progressing well towards Blood and Glory. I'm hoping that by the end of next week I should have the Archers and Reavers up to standard for the event. That should just leave my Loremaster of Hoeth and the IoB Swordmaster Standard Bearer that I'm aware of, although I do need to take a look through my unit of IoB Swordmasters to make sure there's nothing needing doing on them.

Once the models are out of the way it should be full steam ahead on the scenery. I've already got eight woods to choose from for the event and also have my hills (although need to check if they have to be flocked or not - at the moment mine aren't as they're painted the same colour as my gaming table but not sure what the requirements would be for the event). That leaves the Dreadstone Blight to paint and also my fourth piece of terrain. I think I've got a wall I should be able to do in time to satisfy that requirement.

As I'm on leave next week I'll try and find time to do some photos to upload.

On more tournament related news, I've signed up to the Raze and Ruin tournament that's in Leicester on the 19th and 20th of October. While the end of the first day is going to cause me a bit of grief (as I'm going to have to be out the door pretty much as soon as dice down is called to pick my daughter up) I'm hoping it's going to be a good event, especially as it's taking place a couple of minutes drive away. Looking at the comp pack I don't think I'm going to need to paint up anything extra for it which is always good.

Sorry folks but in the end I didn't get time to do any photos this week what with going out with the missus & daughter and finally getting the time and weather to try and get some of the garden cleared out.

I've not got all the models to the stage I was hoping to by this point but that's because I decided to spend some of my painting time working on my Dreadstone Blight for which I've now got the stonework done, with just the wood, metal and skulls to do on it for Blood and Glory. Having said that, I need to figure out where my small plastic glue has gone as one of the floors of the Blight has come loose from the wall (seriously can't believe how badly this kit is missing decent contact points) and the only glue I can put my hand on is the large plastic glue, which has a bunged up nozzle I can't use for the job in question.

Still on the scenery front, I've dug out the box of resin terrain the missus got me for Christmas or birthday a long (long, long, long) time ago as there's three sections of wall in there that I'm going to use as my fourth piece of terrain. This weekend I've got that undercoated and a basecoat on the earth, although I'm trying to figure out a mid to darker brown colour scheme for the wood on the sections.

Aside from this, progress has been made on the models I need to paint up. Having said that, after getting my first practice game in with my army list for the event on Monday (well, I ended up swapping one magic item out for the list I submitted but it's going to be unchanged apart from that) I think there may well be a bit more work needed on the IoB Swordmaster unit for the event than I thought (in that there is some work required as opposed to none) .

All in I think I'm still on target to get the new stuff done in time but I'm a bit worried about whether I'm going to have time for the touch up work on the older models in the army

Ok folks, haven't had time to do unit shots (in fact doing these below has taken more time than I was planning on tonight) but below are some WIP shots of my Dreadstone Blight and barricade sections that I've done a layer of paint on the wood tonight

Ok, I'm officially behind schedule now.

Had planned to get my Archers glued to their bases and magnetised by the end of Saturday.

Instead I found that I made a bit of a booboo when sanding my bases. Instead of leaving the Archers in the slotta bases when I putting the sand on, instead I took them off and it seems that the glue and sand spread a bit while the glue dried. This meant I had to spend time chipping off enough sand on the bases so that the models would sit on them properly and then gluing the Archers on.

Today, instead of getting any work done on models while my daughter was down for her afternoon nap I instead had to spend the time fitting a new inner tube to the missus' bike to mollify her over me having the car next weekend to go to Blood & Glory when she also needs transport to get to work. (Also, a new inner tube, hand grips and lights comes in cheaper than the taxi fare to get her to where she's working next weekend and assuming the mechanical idiot who did the work hasn't in fact made a complete bodge of it, I should be able to wrangle the car for my use a bit more on the weekends which hopefully means I might get the occasional 2400 point game in with regular(ish) gaming buddies Andy and Nick).

Tonight I've magnetised the bases of all the models I've been working on bar the Loremaster of Hoeth, who still needs a teensy bit of work done on his base before I can stick him to it. Tomorrow night I've got my last practice game before Blood and Glory, although annoyingly the scenarios haven't been released yet even though they were supposed to be out by now as far as I can recall. I'm hoping to get some clean-up work on my Ellyrian Reavers done tomorrow during lunch but I'm down a painting session this week as I'm down in London for a interview on Thursday (not sure why I bother to keep going to these things as I never get the jobs) and I'm conscious that I've still got movement trays, clean-up and some work on terrain to squeeze in.