It's Been a Long Road

As I put down my paintbrush, step back from the desk and admire the last figure, I feel a sense of loss. This list, this schedule, has been my life for just under a year. Everything on it is something I've either applied paint to, or have given up on, the failures marked off in angry red rather than somber black.

Fortunately this time around the failures were minimal, and not entirely my fault. A kit that had parts missing to the point of uselessness and some badly miscast metal infantry that I didn't have to willpower to try and save, so off to the discard pile with them.

Plenty of additional extras, unrecorded and unplanned also made their way onto this list, most notably my first Necromunda gang, an Escher outfit that I have named ''The Nightshade Crew" they have served me well so far in the local campaign and my enthusiasm for getting them on the table was the cause for them to jump the queue. The other major unplanned project were my first batch of Gaslands cars, after I was very taken with this new and quirky little system, as well as the novel source of table top miniatures. Other than that a few random minis got in the rotation, but mostly as a palette cleanser between projects.

The Final Tallies

28mm Infantry Figures - 237 (give or take due to poor record keeping on my part)
Monsters, Robots and Large Characters - 7
Vehicles and Bikes - 13
Gaslands Cars & 15mm vehicles - 10
Terrain and Objectives - 7

Where To From Here

It was always my intention to have four main 40k armies. Now that I have them I can see my 40k throughput slowing down to Kill Team sized projects and occasional small expansions or single models for display pieces. I've also got the Kill Team Terrain to paint up, which will be a fairly expansive project, but that is what the airbrush is for. The army sized projects in my new schedule will be a triumphant return to Flames of War for me, as I seek to paint new Commonwealth armies to a much higher standard than I could years ago when getting into it, and with the good plastic kits no less. This will also be a time for me to dive deep into my lead pile and start on things that have been languishing down there for a while. I've got a whole load of display miniatures as well as a few pieces of ephemera that I want to get painted. I'm also going to paint up some D&D monsters and heroes, mostly because I'm planning to get into a Song of Blades and Heroes. The biggest projects however are Gaslands, as I've got a lot of toys that need rebuilding and painting, as well as my remaining Necromunda gangs, Orlock, Van Saar and Goliath respectively. For weirder projects I'm planning to build a 6mm Team Yankee army, which I'm still acquiring minis for, and repainting my old Battlefleet Gothic. However, to start with, and since ScaleACT is happening very soon I'm going to make a start with some old scale model kits that I'll enter if I feel they are good enough.

Ever Onward

This new list looms ahead, hour after hour of entirely self inflicted labour for no real purpose other than the fleeting satisfaction of a job well done as items get checked off. Fortunately the particulars are far less demanding this time around, fewer armies and those that are exist are easier to speed paint due to my recent experimentation with techniques for batching 15mm models quickly. The big departure from my last sequence is that there are more projects that require quality rather than a mere tabletop standard. The downside to army painting is that I've failed to adequately grow my skill as a painter, so now is the time to regroup and give it another shot. The Crystal Dragon looms ahead in 2019 and while I already have one project ready for it, I fear it is not yet up to standard. Instead I'll see what I can do to lift my painting to the next level. On the subject of conventions, Cancon, the event that hosts the Crystal Dragon, appears to have several tournaments that I'm interested in, most notably, a two day Team Yankee affair and a one day Gaslands bash, so the miniatures I requires for these events will be bumped up the priority stack. Anyway, hopefully I'll post another one of these in late 2019, with an every shrinking pile of unpainted plastic, see you then.