Bolt Action - A Retrospective

Big army projects seem to be my niche, for the most part. I don't particularly like them, but I am good at them. I lack the patience, steady hand and flair to really get spectacular results for single minis. But I do have a forte for the boring, repetitive labour of mass army building. My natural talent for painting also lies well away from the bright colours and fantastic detail of high quality display minis and lies in the moderate detail of the rank of file of a modernish army. The platoon, the company is my unit of work. The tank, artillery piece, and field gun are my treats. The real risk for these projects are ones of boredom. Painting the same detail endlessly can get tiring, and the risk of moving too fast and screwing things up is every present.

The Bolt Action British army starter at first glance is pretty standard for an army starter box comparable any other system. There is a full platoon (three squads plus some smaller elements), a vehicle, and a variety of support elements (AT gun, mortar, and a HMG). So for what you pay, about $100-$150, you get a bit more than your usual army starter box, which I find tend to be a special character, one or two squads and a larger creature or vehicle. So in terms of raw bodies on the field you get a a lot of plastic. In terms of quality of the individual model they are fairly mediocre and soft in detail, but the quantity you get does make up for it somewhat. They are fully poseable, you get a load of additional bits and pieces, additional kit and detailing which is good for a purchase of this volume. You will certainly come out of your build with a load surplus bits and pieces.
I'm not sure I'd call it a problem, but many of the weapons are quite delicate and easy to break, which makes the surplus of bits and pieces, especially for weapons, ideal. The upside to this does mean that the weapons are realistically scaled to the person.

In terms of paint job these guys were pretty much built for batch painting. I've already wrote a detailed guide for how I batched out the infantry, you can find it here. The vehicles themselves were done using a method that I was experimenting with for bulking large amounts of 15mm armour. I will go into further detail on this in a future article where I will discuss and walk through the process for combining airbrush pre-shading with enamel based products to get a quick and easy way of painting armour. In terms of my feelings about this process, as usual, batch work is hard and takes personal discipline to follow through with. The real slog with this process, as always, is the base coating. Vallejo paints, when thinned property typically take three layers to get an even layer. When applied to the entirety of the batch this rapidly adds up in terms of working time. The majority colour, Vallejo English Uniform for the uniform jacket and trousers in this case, I did with the air brush, which cut working time down significantly. Once that was done the rest of the details were done with brush by hand, which is where the real cost in terms labour lie. Once all the base coating was done the next stage was washing with a mid tone shade. Easy enough to do, but a I overdid it on a few of the miniatures. The re-layering was the next longest phase, re-applying the relevant colours over the washed areas. Once that is done the highlights were comparatively simple and quick to complete. After that all that remained were minor details like eyes and that is it.

Overall this project is a slog, and I'm definitely hesitant to start another large project like this and attempt to do it in one solid pass. Instead I'm going to break up large projects by a couple of units at a time, because nothing makes painting feel more like work than the lack of variety in a project. In terms of painting similar projects, I will be attempting to repeat this process with 15mm Battlefront miniatures in order to rejuvenate my Flames of War late war British.

Mini Post Mortem - Grand Master Voldus

"Painting is hard, why do I even bother?" I asked myself as I affixed my subject to it's base and collapsed back into my chair.
The cost of the mini itself, part of the Triumvirate of the Primarch boxed set is not cheap at one hundred and fifty clams Australian. This makes me look at the entire set with trepidation and doubt. "Do I have the painting chops to give these miniatures the attention they deserve?" For Voldus, unfortunately, the answer this time is a resounding and depressing no.
The reason why I started with Voldus first is that he was the miniature that I was most willing to risk, as I want to save Guilliman and Cypher to a point where I can afford to really take my time and give these impressive pieces the attention they deserve. One thing I tried to do with this mini is forced myself to experiment with some new techniques, in some respects I think this was the source of much of my ire with this project, so better to get it out of the way now before I start work on other, more impressive projects.

Sub-Assemblies
I chose to paint this model in two sub-assemblies, the head and the body.

First Stage - Armour / Metallics
Metallics have always been a problem for me, I've never been good at them. Thankfully the new Vallejo Metallic Air paints are some of the best I've ever use, and certainly didn't disappoint in this project. To establish the overall metal colour I started with a dark metal and layered up to the bright by heavy overbrushing, applied a black wash then applied successive layers of dry brush to bring out the upper layers and higher highlights. The end result was quite impressive and surprisingly good for how rough the process was.
The golds were a little harder to accomplish. Starting from a silver metallic basecoat I applied the Metal Colour Gold, washed with Reikland Fleshshade, then layered up the Gold again, then did a final highlight with a bright white metal. One problem that I have encountered with the Metal Colour paints is that they are very thin. While this is great for doing basecoating, it does make higher highlights not as prominent and difficult to achieve. In future a combination of these paints with my older, thicker metals may prove to be a winning combination for painting gold.

Second Stage - Robes
Since the robes are the next largest surface area they were my next target. As always, start at the largest surface areas and work your way down is my standard MO for painting projects, certainly didn't mix that up this time around.
I started with the inner robes using a darker red to establish an overall mid-tone. Then I hit my first snag, I can't wet blend for the life of me. Maybe it was a problem with the paints I was using, maybe I just suck at it. Either way I had a hard time trying to establish that transition between shades and highlights. While I did get a result that I am mostly happy with eventually I could've achieve the same result or better with a combination of glazing and layering, so I don't think I will be revisiting this technique any time soon. The outer white robes I painted with a more cream colour that uses Game Colour Bonewhite as the mid tone. The final result was way more to my liking as I fell back to my familiar techniques. I also tried some simple freehand on the robes to get used to it, the final result, a single purple line on the inner red of the cloak. Overall I had some hard time getting it even, but it turned out reasonably well. I also used this stage to paint all of the red and white components, which was pretty much perfunctory.

Third Stage - Black Leather, Armour Inner Suite and Book Pages.
I had some trouble deciding what colour to paint some of the books. They were layered and relayed several times which ultimately resulted in a fairly bad final finish when I settled on painting the book covers black. I used my usual technique with a mid grey and washing over until I get a black finish didn't quite work so I fell back to black with manual grey highlights. In the end the result was mediocre and this result was the point where I decided that I wasn't going to get the high quality result that I was hoping. The book pages were a major source of rage for me in this model. The detail is very soft and didn't take a wash well, so I had to layer up the pages with white lines to build up the impression of texture.

Fourth Stage - Scroll Work and Seals
Not much to say about this work, painted with the usual Games Workshop method. For some of the larger lettering I did try using a micron pen for the scroll work which didn't work out as well as expected, so I'll go back to using paint and brush for this work in future. The seals themselves were a simple purple with basic shading, layers and highlights so not much to write about.

Fifth Stage - Tubing
I wanted to try some glow effects for this mini, especially since the character is a Pysker as far as I understand. To achieve this I did a simple white basecoat and layered over with the Games Workshop blue glaze until I got an effect I like. I also used this to paint the eyes of the model to give the impression of an inner glow.

Sixth Stage - Flesh
I experimented with a new flesh wash this time around. It turned out okay but I probably could've achieved a better result with manual brushwork. But by this late stage of the project I just wanted it done, so I rushed it more than I should've and it shows. The beard on the other hand turned out way better than expected, a light grey washed over with black, then layered up with many small downward strokes of greys and whites. Generally I'm happy with the final result in this case.

Final Assembly
The last major problem was getting the head into the armour, I screwed this up at first and ended up getting some super glue on the model's face. I fixed this up with some matt medium once the glue had dried, but this instance did make me regret painting this model as sub assemblies. The base was my fairly easy usual technique to blend with the rest of my 40k collection, which turned out well as usual.

Final Thoughts
As a tabletop model it is a very good result, as a display piece the final paint job is definitely not up to standard. A combination of my own mediocre skill, quickly eroding patience towards the end all contributed to the standard of the result. I think it would help if I had a couple of different projects on the boil so I don't run the risk of getting sick of a particular project. Anyway, hopefully the other Triumvirates will turn out better than this fellow.

Warmachine Cygnar - A Retrospective

I admit, I find the fiction of Warmachine rather dull. You have a vaguely early modern kingdom of blue guys versus the Tsarist nation of red guys. I kid, Cygnar and Khador respectively. Unfortunately that is just about all I know about the fiction behind the universe. Oh, I also know that there are some undead guys, some religious fundamentalists, some crypto-fascist elves and some clockwork things.
So to be fair, I don't intend to do a deep dive into the lore, there are others no doubt whom are far more invested in it than I am, so they would be a better source of discussion on them. Never the less, I've completed a pile of Cygnar that I bought and painted for the purpose of gaming with one of my local buddies. Now that I'm done, and the models are sitting on the shelf I feel it is time for a bit of a discussion of the projects.

First of all, I love the aesthetic of the Trencher infantry models. They capture a look of steampunk soldiery that I definitely appreciate. With this in mind I knew they would always be the center piece of my army. My first Cygnar army did this, this new one is no exception. I've got one full unit of Trencher regulars and another of Trencher Commandos to fill out the rank and file. I mostly like the models for the regulars, but like the entire range they are fairly busy in terms of painting detail. Generally I start on the inner most detail, which is the armour in the coat and under the arms and around the chest. One of the advantages of the models is that they generally the conceal the faces, which mercifully minimize the amount of flesh that you have to paint. Unfortunately the Commandos don't have this advantage and will generally take a bit more effort to get a good result. The metallics also turned out fairly decent after discovering the combination of P3 Pig Iron layered over with the P3 bright brass colour. This means you don't have to layer up as much to achieve an even colour.

The Warjacks were hard work, thankfully they had their nice share of large curved surfaces that take two brush blending quite well. The downside to this is the tendency of P3 blues to take many, many layers to achieve an even base coat to work off, combined with the long drying times it makes the staging of these models take an interminable amount of time to dry. A weird complaint indeed, but I am a weird person, and this entire thing is basically stream of conscience about the experience anyway. The metallics were a lot of hard work as well, which blow out the time even more. In terms of model, I don't actually like Warjacks that much. They make sense from a steampunk aesthetic better that other products in this space, I guess it ultimately isn't for me.
In terms of model and material I'm not much of a fan of their plastics. I find them a bit too soft and they don't sand down very well, which makes trying to achieve and even fit and finish quite time consuming.

Finally, the Warcasters themselves are the best quality models of the entire run that I painted, though of varying quality. The two casters I painted were Striker and Sloane, first point I was much happier with the quality of the Striker model way more than the Sloane model. It went together far better than Sloane and the final paint result turned out way better. Sloane on the other hand didn't turn out that well due to a combination of difficult assembly and ultimately an unenthusiastic paint job on my part. This was also another attempt at doing the whole cork slate base thing for my HQ figures and I'm fairly meh about the quality of the final result. I'm particularly unhappy with how badly the flesh work came out for Sloane, which was my attempt to do a lighter, more feminine skin tone. Lately I've been achieving better results with non-P3 paints with more home made glazes, so I think my habits as a painter are beginning to shift in terms of my flesh painting techniques. The rest of Sloane's paint job was fairly standard stuff, layering and highlighting for the blue armour and washes, re-layering and highlights for everything else and washed metals for the metals. In terms of model quality I found that the Striker model was way better in terms of fine detail than the Sloane model, which I found very, very soft and kind of boring.

Overall, I think my somewhat mediocre paint job reflects my middling enthusiasm for the project. I originally intended to do way more for this project, I have additional models for some of the larger Warjacks, but no desire to paint them. The only thing I need to do for making my Cygnar competitive is re-painting my Grenadier Warjacks due to their current effectiveness in the meta. I'm planning to add them to my roster in the next cycle but that is it for Cygnar, unless the meta changes out from under me of course. That being said, Warcasters may make for some nice single model projects that could supplement my current line up, so we'll see what the future holds.

Team Yankee - A Retrospective

One of my earliest memories of PC gaming is a very old title, M1 Battle Tank. This game put me in command of a single vehicle after which the game is named, from there you have to give some vaguely socialist looking polygons a super-sized helping of pixilated democracy. My dad being a former tank mechanic as well, I suppose that rubbed off on me as well. I certainly read Team Yankee as a teenager and revisited it as a young adult. I then went on to read the rest of his books, set in the "Hoyle-verse" so to speak, which largely focused on Cold War style ground combat from the a variety of perspectives ranging from the battalion commander to the trigger puller. They also had the advantage of lacking a lot of the Merica' factor that made the collected works of Tom Clancy a little on the nose for me, as it focused on a real ground war between roughly matched and modern combatants for the most part. This is what contemporary scenarios don't have going for them, modern war is invariably asymmetric war, lacking the sheer destructive potential and an actual fighting chance for both sides, apart from civilian fatigue at home of course and the poor civilians that actually live in the AO bearing the brunt of the collateral liberation.

Team Yankee, the Battlefront rule set for Cold War tank combat, named after the titular book was a pleasant surprise to me. So as you've seen previously on my Tumblr and other socials I bought in, eager to revisit this particular period of warfare that is often overshadow by the contemporary.
I was seriously considering the Americans for a while, though I do have a fondness for massed tanks, and not having to paint masses of camouflage, as well as a general appreciation for Soviet equipment and infantry, so I went with the Reds. In the interest of full disclosure, I haven't actually played the game yet. As is the case most of the time I'm here to talk about the models and painting, sort of a half review, half discussion of technique.

Purchase One - Pochenkov's Bears
The faction starter was the first and obvious purchase for me. Nine tanks was a good deal plus the Hinds. The first thing I attempted was the T-72s, I won't go into detail about how I painted the model, as I detailed it extensively in my article on how to paint Soviet Armour.
The quality of the kit itself I found to be adequate for what I was expecting. Generally it fit together well and the keyed tracks will certainly help you get the alignment right, so no accidentally gluing the tracks in the wrong direction. The turret and hull went together fine and took to magnetization relatively well, so no complaints in that department. My method of painting all of the parts separately, in retrospect led to some particular problems down the track with fitting together later in. The side skirts didn't adhere as well as I would've liked, which left some thin gaps which probably would have benefited from some green stuff work. The real annoyance of the kit were the detachable fuel drums fitted to the rear. I had trouble getting them to stick together without showing a seam and in terms of parts they are some of the more breakable that I have had to deal with. The crew were easy enough to paint up, and mercifully, there were no metal parts with the entire kit.
The Hinds on the other hand I completely screwed up by messing up magnetization, so I shelved them until I can work up the enthusiasm to attempt a fix. The Hinds themselves are quite difficult to put together an will sport a wicked seam line unless you are careful. Furthermore, being aircraft kits, I find them particular vulnerable to accidentally leaving fingerprints in the plastic if you happen to over spill the cement. So definitely one for the more confident builder or someone that is a dabbler in scale modelling.

Purchase Two - Infantry Platoon & BMPs
A full platoon of Soviet Infantry, loaded with all of the kit you would expect in the mid eighties. Mercifully, in drab brown uniforms so no painting masses of DPU fatigues. In retrospect I should've bought a single platoon rather than the company box, but I didn't notice the blister until I had already rung up the purchase, oh well. One thing that was immediately apparent with this kit is the generally varied quality of the casting. There were plenty of instances where the weapons were misshapen, partially filled, or simply not there. There were also a few instances where the mold had been misaligned, resulting in a few equally misaligned troopers here and there. Another major bugbear I have with these kits are the bases, often being extremely thick and require a great deal of grinding and filing in order to get them down to a size that will fit in the Battlefront slot bases. Personally, I look forward to them moving over to plastic if it means that these issues finally disappear. At some point in the future I have some 15mm plastic British Infantry, and my brief look at the molds indicate that the level of quality is overall, much higher.
The painting itself was fairly standard for this scale, base all the colours, wash, reapply bases to 75% of surface area, then accent highlights were it is appropriate. Some of the face casting was pretty bad, so there was only so much I could do to add detail in that space. Otherwise they were a reasonably good paint job, and somewhat fun to paint. But I wouldn't want to paint an entire company of them.
To carry these guys I bought a single box of BMPs. Unfortunately I screwed up the magnetization of one, so I could only form the bare bones platoon. Assembly and painting wise they were much like the T-72s, easy to assemble and easy to paint.

Purchase Three - Shilka Battery
This was one of two support elements I purchased, being well aware of the power of air support I thought it best to get something to counter it. Since I have a love / hate relationship with the Shilka from my Operation Flashpoint days I thought I'd give these beasts a place in my force. The kit itself is way more traditional Battlefront. You have a resin body and turret with metal tracks, the casting of both aren't great. The metal tracks never quite go on straight and the hull required a lot of filing before the tracks would fit in. Not only is the resin dust still a goddamn respiratory hazard (wear your dust mast folks), I managed to snap on of the track guards and park of the front hull off one of the pieces while trying to sand down some resin buildup in a deep corner. Thankfully, once it was all together than paint job went well and quickly, pretty much identical to the T-72s, which is one of the major benefits of painting a large 15mm force of army. Most of your tanks are going to have a similar paint scheme. Fortunately once it all went together it looks good enough for what it is. Though I look forward to the day when all of these kits come out in plastic by default.

Purchase Four - Carnation Battery
This is the second and final support element for my force. These bad boys are essentially 122mm howitzers on a chassis that resembles a scaled up BMP. Much like the Shilka, these are resin bodies and turrets with metal weapons and tracks. Fortunately, they went together far easier than the Shilkas and required far less sanding and preparation. The paint job went on well enough to give it a finish consistent with the rest of the force. My only real complaint is that the weapon barrels are locked level, meaning you can't easily model them set up to fire a barrage unless you put in some conversion work.

Final Thoughts
I am definitely a fan of the subject matter of Team Yankee, and the models are no exception. Again my big complaint with Battlefront kits is that I like them until I meet resin and metal, then I find  the castings tend to drop off in quality. I look forward to the gradual phasing out of metal which they seem to be moving towards because currently the consistent quality in casting is just not there. For upcoming 15mm forces I will probably stick purely with plastic ranges and if none are available, source an alternative from another manufacturer. Anyway, that will do for the time being. More project retrospectives to come.

Another One Bites The Dust

In the final evaluation sticking to an expansive list of projects is quite difficult. I honestly don't remember when I wrote my current list, sometime back in early 2016 potentially. Now that it is done I feel nothing but relief. First of all I feel the need to get my list of shame out of the way.

Abandon Projects
I consider these negative points for the completion of a current list. Projects that I have bought the miniatures for, maybe started, but ultimately abandon are some kind of stain on my level of commitment. Unfortunately, life does get in the way and some things become less important than they were.

• Guild Ball
  My reasons for ditching this project mostly stem from the complete lack of enthusiasm for both the game and the miniatures. Add to that the fact that it seems to have been very much a flash in the pan in terms of popularity in my local meta. Therefore following through with the project would not have segued nicely into a competitive scene. Furthermore, I don't have a great deal of enthusiasm for sports themed mini games. So ultimately my desire to move on to other projects trumped my willingness to follow through.
• Flames of War - ANZAC Centurion
  I screwed up the build with this one, also the metal tracks were a bit munted, and suffered from some kind of lead rot that occasionally happens to older minis. Ultimately I couldn't save it, so I abandon it. At some point I'll find a better quality Centurion model at this scale and have another crack at it.

Finished Projects

• Warhammer 40k
  These were a composite of one big project, the Baneblade, and a mixture of smaller models to expand my Astra Militarum. The Baneblade itself turned out swimmingly, perfectly in line with the armour colour scheme with the rest of my AM armour, as were the rest of the newly painted troops. Overall not much to talk about here, a fairly routine and easy project

• Warmachine
  I couldn't wait to see the end of this project to be honest. I do like the Trencher infantry models, but damn me if they are an utter pain to get painted up. The Jacks were just as frustrating, and I have a particular complaint with the plastic that they have adopted. It doesn't file down particularly well, which makes cleaning and prepping the model particularly frustrating. The end results weren't that impressive, but ultimately they are table ready and good enough, so I'll call it a win.

• Bolt Action
  These chaps were the big one and potentially versatile as they will be usable in Chain of Command and Konflict 47 as well as Bolt Action. I added a second Cromwell using the Konflict 47 model to aid with this. Considering the quantity of models required for this project my batch method was good enough to achieve a fair table top standard. I already have a couple of good friends and local opponents lined up for this, so I'm looking forward to wheeling them out.

 

• Warzone Resurrection
  Speaking of flash in the pan projects, as far as I know there is no one in Canberra playing these guys. The level of quality that I achieved was pretty good, but not quite good enough as a comp entry as I originally intended for them. So I rolled them up, finished the project and done is done. In all likelihood I will never deploy these chaps on the table in anger.

• Display Pieces
  Ultimately a couple of these didn't quite make the cut as a comp entry. For the Warmachine Pirate, I honestly don't remember the name of the model, and it wasn't good enough to use for the Crystal Dragon, so I ditched it and went for a different piece that ultimately didn't make the cut for a bronze. Ultimately I have decided to give comp level painting a miss for a while, as I don't have the time and patience to do it properly. In slightly better news the Titus Pullo figure came in third at ScaleACT 2016 in the historical figures category, so hurrah for small victories.

Bonus Projects

• Flames of War El-Alamein
  The re-release of Flames of War, and the El-Alamien starter was quite appealing to me. With the failure of the ANZAC Centurions I felt the need to practice my 15mm armour. So the vehicles in this box proved to be a nice distraction from my larger projects. In terms of quality the models were decent for a small plastic kit and the final result was very clean and easy to accomplish. I'm also getting the hang of how to properly apply and dress up transfers, which came out very well in this kit. At some point in the ungiven future I have some vague intentions of rebuilding my Late War British Motorized Rifles in plastic, but for now I'm going to avoid dipping any further into Flames of War army projects.

• Mermaid Bust
  This one was an impulse purchase at ScaleACT and turned out pretty well in the final cut. Sadly it didn't make the cut at the Crystal Dragon. So I think I'm done with serious display painting for a while.

• Team Yankee - Soviets
  I'm a big Cold War fan, so these fellows were a bit of a treat. Like the El-Alamien British and Germans, they were easy and quick to assemble and paint. The final results were pretty good for a quick job and the entire army was done in record time for me. The single mech infantry platoon turned out pretty decent, but I did mess up the Hinds due to not being careful with my rare earth magnets. At some point I'm planning to expand this force by adding some more infantry and ancillary vehicles, I'm thinking mostly support things like BRDMs and additional artillery and anti-air. I'm also planning to switch the infantry over to plastic as I was not a fan of the poor casting quality on the metal infantry company boxed set.

• Pulp Heroines
  I started these as fodder for a Twitch stream, as they seemed like a nice one of set of things to paint, independent of my current workload. While the streaming didn't last, I did end up finishing them off and getting them to a pretty decent level of quality. It is also nice to paint something outside the usual manufacturers.

• Cadds Commandos
  Like with the Pulp Heroines, I picked these guys up on a whim and painted them as a break from army painting. I think the level of quality that I achieved was exceptionally high for my standard, and has given me some ideas for future projects.

• Age of Sigmar
  These chaps were an impulse purchase mostly because I was intrigued with the new affordable boxed sets that Games Workshop are putting out. For fifty bucks (Australian money, so automatically more expensive), you get thirteen models, basic rules and some dice. As a basic intro to the hobby these sets are quite good for getting enough of the basics to push toys around a table top. At some point I'm planning to use them as the core of some Khorne and Stormcast warbands for the skirmish subset of the rules, but that won't happen for some time. In terms of painting they were pretty good GW standard, push fit, easy to assemble and lots of clean detail. The Stormcast don't suffer from the everything has skulls on it problem that a lot of 40k models have, so that is a bonus as well.

• Christmas Goblins
  As part of my mother's new experiment with home made Christmas crackers I got a handful of reaper bones minis, complete with all the problems associated with them. But the thought was nice. I put them through a quick paint job just to get them off my work bench and into my display cabinet. Again, I normally don't think much of Reaper Bones for a serious painting project, but for a half day to a day palette cleanser they work pretty well.

• Mancubus
  While doing a clean out in preparation for buying a house I found an old Mancubus mini by Reaper that came with the Doom III collectors edition. Since I had just come off the Bolt Action British I was looking for something quick and fun to do for a video tutorial, and this allowed me to experiment with some washing and glazing techniques for flesh that I've been keen to try for some time now. Overall I'm quite happy with the final result, as I think I've come fairly close to the original Doom character art. The only part which I don't like are they eyes, which In retrospect, I should've painted more conventionally rather than relying on washes.

• Old School IG
  These were mostly an experiment with shaded basecoats, which turned out pretty well in the final evaluation. If I ever do a large army that wear DPUs I'll probably resort to this technique to save time.

• Chibi Titan
  A nice little display piece inspired by Attack on Titan. Overall, decent result, especially the muscle strands.

The New List
On the up and coming list I've got 40k, a ton of it. With the arrival of 8th edition and in theory I'll be starting a new slow grow soon I'm keen to tackle a variety of vastly different projects. Unlike last time I'm going to move between them a bit at a time rather than painting the entire thing in one stretch. I'm going to do this to help prevent burnout from setting in for the bigger projects.

• Warhammer 40k
• Astra Militarum
  The Guard have always been my first choice for an army, and in this round they are certainly going to get some of the attention that they deserve. I'm planning to expand it with an entirely new platoon. Along with that I'm going to add some much needed additional heavy weapon support in the form of an Autocannon Heavy Squad and a Lascannon Heavy Squad. Furthermore, to give me some much needed anti-blob firepower I'm getting a Demolisher, primarily for the Punisher Gattling Cannon variant, but I'm going to try and magnetise the kit to allow it to swap out for the regular Demolisher cannon. I've also got an assortment of smaller models, a Standard Bearer, Pyskers, a Tech Priest, some mechanics and a wounded guardsman just to add flare to the force.
• Dark Angels
  With the release of 8th Edition and the rise of the Primaris, I'm going to retire my Dark Angels to the reserves. This does mean that the spare marine squad and their Rhino are going to get a paint job and added to the force. I imagine I'd bring the army out occasionally, but they probably won't be expanded on after this. The other models are for Shadow War as much as 40k. I've got a box of plastic Boltgun Scouts and a few old metals to compliment my Scout Sniper squad. Again, once I have painted all these I should have enough minis to cover Shadow War, so I doubt I'll expand it much after that.
• Chaos
  Last CanCon I dove deep into the bargain bins of Good Game and emerged with an armful of demon boxed sets. While I have moved some of the Nurgle stuff on to one of my diseased wargaming comrades, the remaining Bloodletters and a Demon Prince will be reinforcing my long neglected Chaos.
• Tau
  These chaps were the other half of an old Kill Team boxed set. Since I have never painted Tau before I'm glad to have the opportunity. It will only be a squad, but I may expand on it down the line.
• Triumvirate Boxed Sets
  Because I'm a sucker for good quality models I've been rather taken by the Triumvirate boxed sets, and as a result I have purchased all of them. I'm going to try for a couple of marks above my usual painting standard for all of these models, so much so that I'm getting increasingly afraid to put paint to primer for them. Never the less, once progress starts I'm going to have some fodder for the local painting competitions.
• Ultramarines All-Primaris Force
  I'm a big fan of the Primaris, which are basically marines but at the correct scale when stood side by side with other human sized models. Rather than add these guys to my regular Dark Angels I'm going to start them as an all new Ultramarines force, mostly to compliment Gulliman from the third Triumvirate. In terms of future expansion, this force will definitely be getting some love. Since releases are beginning to trickle through the pipeline we'll have to wait and see what in the new range I actually like.
• Objectives
  On a whim I picked up the objective boxed set, nothing much to tell other than I like the imagination that went into some of these pieces. Hopefully this will lead into a further expansion and improvement on my personal 40k terrain library.
• Dark Eldar
  These fellows were meant to be for a slow grow, but the stopping and starting nature of my local gaming groups means that they have been slowly gathering on my shelves without getting even remotely table ready. This cycle will be the time that they actually get done, I'm planning a black with pale green highlights, so I should be able to batch them out relatively quickly.
• Misc
  I have a few random models to add in as supplements to my various forces. So far I've got a Vindicare Assassin,  a pair of Death Cult Assassins, and a very old Lady Inquisitor model. Realistically most of these are going to be palette cleansers between the big batched projects. 

• Infinity
  Before I close off Infinity for good I want to paint at least one TAG for my PanO force. Not much else to say other than it it will mostly be Vallejo Model Colour by way of airbrush, following the methods defined in Angel Giraldez books on the subject. I don't think I'll tackle any more Infinity for some time after that as after this model I'll have a reasonable force for pick up games and that is all I need for the foreseeable future.
• Bolt Action - Konflict 47
  With a few additions, my completed Bolt Action British will be playable in Konflict 47. Along with the dual purpose Cromwells that have already been painted up, I have a squad of British Armoured Infantry and a generic dieselpunk style walker that could act as a decent stand in for the British walkers that are already defined in the Konflict 47 rule set. These projects will probably serve as more of a break in between large chunks of 40k.
• Flames of War
  I've been experimenting with some airbrush techniques for scale modelling, more so, I've also been working using oils and AK Interactive products for weathering. To that end I purchased some T-34s, Shermans, and Comets from the Battlefront range to practice on. In the next cycle I'm planning on starting a Late War British Motorised Infantry company as well, so practice now will help feed into future projects.
• Warmachine
  Nothing fancy here, apparently the Grenadier Light Warjack is still one of the kings of the Cygnar meta. Which means my old metal ones are going to get stripped, reassembled, and repainted.
• Display
  Finally, I've got a the Sigmarite Priest from the Silver Tower boxed set and a Highway Woman model from the Twisted miniatures range. Both of these I'm going to paint standalone, aiming for the best possible level of quality that I can manage. I've got a couple of display bases to go with them, so this will also be another foray into constructing a mini diorama. I'm hoping that at least one of these will crack bronze at the Crystal Dragon, but I'm not getting my hopes up.

That is pretty much it for the new cycle. At the time of writing I've broken the shrink wrap off a variety of these projects and have begun in earnest, I'd encourage you to check out my Tumblr or Instagram for a more blow-by-blow account of my painting progress. For a few of these larger projects I will write up more detailed retrospectives to discuss techniques and the models themselves, sort of a half how to paint, half review. Anyway, that is all for now.