Oh My God, What Have I Done?!

So in my newfound enthusiasm for assembling plastic figures that I discussed in my previous post, I ended up finishing the empire battalion and then promptly impulse-purchased about a thousand points of second-hand Orcs & Goblins for forty quid. After stripping and patching the O&G forces I went ahead and assembled my remaining Infinity PanOceania figures as well. This has left me with over a hundred figures that are ready to be painted, and it’s prompted a sort of existential crisis.

Fuuuuuuuuuuck.

Ever since I got back into the hobby four years ago I vowed that I wouldn’t overexert myself in this way, and up until now I had been doing really well. I don’t think I’ve ever had more than 30 individual figures that needed painting at a time, and even that felt overwhelming. Admittedly the past year has seen me become more involved in the miniature hobby, and certainly play more games, than at any time in the past, but I still find this lapse a little disconcerting and I’m trying to puzzle out why miniature gamers are so prone to this habit of buying far more than they can paint.

I’d like to posit a few key reasons:

1. Painting is far and away the most time consuming aspect of the hobby, while at the same time being the one least necessary to actually playing the game. The result is that anyone who enters the hobby in order to play a game system (which is the majority of people outside of pure hobbyists) has a huge impetus to buy and assemble new miniatures, but little to actually spend hours painting them outside of aesthetic reasons.
2. The general tendency among players of any game system to collection more than one faction. It’s very easy to start a new system with a single faction, but as soon as you’ve become comfortable with the ruleset and have faced a number of different opponents it’s only natural to want to branch out and try different things tactically, as well as acquire models with a different look from your norm. Proxying is usually only acceptable for a handful of figures and it’s understandably rare to find people willing to play against a whole army of proxies as something about it is just fundamentally unsatisfying. Thus, we seem forever propelled into spending money on another faction that results in a greater pileup of miniatures to paint.
3. Warhammer Fantasy is the absolute worst system to have to paint. It demands huge numbers of rank and file troops that are boring to paint once you’ve settled on a scheme and technique. Consequently I find it fosters an attitude that painting must be spurred on by a combination of financial self-loathing and a pigheaded stubbornness. I have literally never met anyone who has enjoyed painting their fantasy army, or at least the huge blocks of infantry it requires.

I think that, in order to keep myself sane, I will be simply storing away the Orcs I purchased. Not taking them out to game, nor paint, and putting them out of my mind. I didn’t spend so much on them that I’ll feel really guilty about not using them, and this will allow me to come back in a few months time when I have less to paint to decide whether to keep them or paint them up.

In the meantime I’ll be focused on finishing my Panoceania force which only has five figures to go before its fully completed. But first I’ll be painting the Empire knights i’ve assembled and sprayed in order to be able to glue them to their horses. I’ve tried out the Army Painter Plate Metal Spray on them as there is so much armor, and the results look great so far (I’m a huge fan of the Army Painter metallics). I’ve even tried something new for me and done partial undercoats of white and the metallic for the horses as seen bellow.

I think with the metallic already done it should be a quick job and I’ll be sure to keep the blog updated!

Plastic Adventures

Following the start of my PanOceania force I’ve been preparing to return to Fantasy and 40k as a hobbyist after a four year hiatus from any Games Workshop products. Like many miniature wargamers I have serious issues with the behavior of GW as a business, yet the appeal and quality of their systems manages to outweigh my feelings towards the company. There may come a day when this is no longer the case, but as it stands I’ve been enjoying supporting my local LGS by preparing to assemble a small force of 1000pts for both Fantasy and 40k. It’s been an absolute dream to assemble plastic instead of metal after eight months of pinning Infinity figures, as well as painting on the broad oceanic expanses of heroic scale figures.

As it stands I’ve been constructing an Empire battalion and have been experimenting with an altered paint scheme to distinguish my newly painted units from those of four years ago. At the same time I want to keep the army cohesive enough that they look good on the tabletop, so I’ll be keeping the dreaded yellow as cross-color between the two forces and replace the blue with a deep purple.

Using some old state troopers I had lying around I tried a couple different shades and techniques. Below are two different yellow base-coats over a white primer.

Vallejo Golden Yellow on the left, Army Painter Demonic Yellow on the right.

I’ve decided upon the left (Vallejo Golden Yellow) as the base, due to its better coverage and the appeal of having the yellow be slightly toned down. The contrast with the purple makes the Golden Yellow look really rich, despite it being a very creamy tone that I’m sure would look washed out with a different scheme. Furthermore it looks great when it’s given a slightly more intense shade by a yellow ink wash as seen below, compared to the brighter yellow which just gets muddied. I’m still not sure how I’m going to highlight it though, I might even end up just leaving the yellow alone after the wash if I can’t figure out a way to do it!

Both the Vallejo (left) and Army Painter (right) after a GW Casandora Yellow ink wash.

And here's a little Tau teaser for my 40k force!

Start of a Panoceania Force

I was quite pleased with how Gargazone the Panoceania trooper turned out, so since my last update I’ve painted his compatriots to form a core group of cheap troopers to use for most of my Panoceania lists. As it stands this is three Fusiliers and three Kamau troopers as seen below.

I try to emphasize getting whole armies finished I use an extremely simple 3-tier Base/Ink/Highlight format for all of my miniatures that totally cuts out any layering. While I’m aware that this will always hold me back from achieving a really stunning paintjob, for now I’m just happy to work through lots of minis with this format as I get better with color co-ordination, brush control, and end up with lots of armies that I can play with.

However in an effort to get the most out of this simple system I’ve purposely experimented a bit with my inking techniques for the mint-green color on these figures to try and get the best result. Below is the first trooper (Gargazone) that I painted, in which my ink wash went over every part of the initial mint-green basecoat. As you can see this results in the highlights really standing out quite a bit, which I like. Yet at the same time it can make the non-highlighted portions look a little muddied or inconsistent and this is something that’s always frustrated me.

To that end I attempted to do my ink wash FIRST over the white primer and then do my mint-green basecoat afterwards on this guy, trying to leave the darkened areas produced by the wash alone. I’m not really happy with this method at all, as the highlights seem a little washed out, but more significantly the initial basecoat which is always SO IMPORTANT in making a figure look good is really inconsistent in its coverage as I tried to avoid the darkened areas. I could see this looking alright with models that have really clearly defined dark/light areas but on the highly detailed truescale infinity figures it just doesn’t cut the mustard. (at least at my skill level)

Finally I’ve found a technique that I’m quite happy with here, which is to ink after the initial basecoast as per usual, but only do so in the shaded areas that require definition and try to leave raised areas ink-free as much as possible. This resulted in a deep contrast with the shading against a much cleaner looking bulk of the armor that I really like. Admittedly the highlighting remains a little more subtle here but the basecoat looks so much cleaner, and has more overall pop, that I don’t mind at all.

And for the record yes, that Fusilier has a full Burt-Reynolds-style mustache, and I am SO incredibly pleased about it. I also started to highlight the red with a bright orange, rather than toning it up by mixing in white, which I find comes out too pinkish. I’m not 100% happy with the red yet but I’ll continue to work on it. I think my problem stems from using a very bright red as a base color.

Here's the remainder of my PanO force to assemble and paint! I love that infinity is conducive to these elegant little armies.

Finished Kamau - Gargazone is Complete!

Quick update to show off the finished Kamau trooper I started. I'm reasonably happy with it as a first tester model for my PanO paint scheme. Next up will be a Fusilier!

Unfortunately I lot his antenna in a tragic accident when my mate dropped him on my keyboard. No biggie though, I filled in his brain-cavity and i've learnt a valuable lesson about PanO antennas. Also, I can now distinguish Gargazone from his fellow Kamau troopers!

Thanks for reading and i'll continue to update my PanO forces as they progress!

First PanO Model - WIP Kamau

Working through my ALEPH army made me realize how enjoyable painting could be, and I decided that rather than attempt to build a really complete force I’d prefer to move on and paint the figures I found most appealing in other factions. I’ve always adored the Cutter model from PanOceania so I went ahead and bought one, along with some appropriately thematic Kamau soldiers to accompany it. Here is my first painted PanO figure, a WIP Kamau model with just the basecoat done that will give you an idea of my color scheme.

My girlfriend is visiting at the moment and decided to name this lucky trooper "Gargazone". The writing will be painted over, but the name shall remain forever.

I’m really pleased with how my color combinations came out and love the mint tone, although the dark blue accents on the hoses/pants will definitely be changed for something else. I’ll post pictures when he’s finished!

Infinity Aleph Army - Spring 2014

This army represents both my current painting ability, and the single most focussed expression of my interest in the miniature hobby so far. These were all purchased and painted over the span of 5-6 months with some divergences made for painting Kraye and building some other figures. I’ve been playing with these guys frequently throughout the painting process, and Infinity is easily my favourite game by far. I love the sculpts and while there was a bit of a learning curve getting the hang of the very small, yet detailed, models, I’m very happy with the overall result.

I based my color-scheme off of Evangelion Unit 01 from one of my favourite anime's. As soon as I saw the Dakini tacbot models I knew I had to use this as my scheme and I'm quite happy with the look of the green/purple/black. The Dakini's were consequently some of the first units I painted.

Admittedly I regret incorporating gold into the scheme on some of the earlier models like Diomedes and the Asura. But i'm not bothered enough to go back and change it at the moment.

Here's a close up of the "black marble" bases I ended up painting. I'm actually quite pleased with how they turned out even though they're a little wacky, and i've had some people think its supposed to be lightning.The later bases have a ridged texture in a single direction that I think makes it more obvious.

These were some of the last units I did, and I think its clear that my brush control had gotten a lot better by that point. I'm very aware that this is only table-top quality painting, and to a degree this is what I was shooting for, as my goal was to get the army finished rather than "perfect". However I think just painting a lot of figures to a decent quality, rather than agonizing over each one, has done a lot more to help my confidence and ability. Each figure here took me no more than five hours to paint, but I think there's a marked improvement in the later ones like Achilles.

Warmachine Cygnar Army 2011-2013

This Cygnar army marks what I’d consider my first real commitment to the miniature hobby, in that I was actively playing Warmachine games as I worked my way through these models and painted them. That said, the span of time it took them to reach this state was positively glacial. I recall painting my starter box immediately after finishing the empire army three years ago.

These were initial color scheme tests that I later went back and repainted over to bring them in line with the rest of the force. I also added highlights to the jacks.

My brother also bought an old Menoth starter so we could play games together. I painted these fairly quickly and didn’t get too bothered about the final result. Pretty basic stuff but I can’t bring myself to sell it off and its worth next to nothing now anyways.

pNemo has a special place in my heart for being the first miniature I felt I’d painted to a high standard and was very satisfied with. Unfortunately he’s an extremely fragile warcaster on the table and not very competitive, and I’d posit my frequent use of him (at least partially) contributed to my huge losing streak with Warmachine. More generally I think I only very recently started to grasp the mechanics of the game properly and be a truly competitive player, but unfortunately this happened right after I’d come to grips with Infinity, which I’d now consider my primary game.

This gunmage UA represents the first time I was really happy with my highlighting, having just discovered glazing. (wet blending remains a bit beyond me at the moment)

Siege was one of the first figures I painted after moving to England in fall of 2013, and came after a several-month break in painting. For all that I think he turned out alright and is a lot more fun on the table than pNemo.

Kraye was painted very recently and I think he effectively represents my current ability to paint warmachine figures. He’s such a large and detailed figured that it took me far longer than my usual “5 hours per figure” rule but I’m relatively happy with the result.

There are still a small handful of pieces I need to get around to painting. In particular there is a stormclad that I undercoated two years ago which is still guilting me about not being painted yet! I also recently built an eCaine blister which I’d had lying around for ages, and between eCaine, Siege, and Kraye I’m hoping to have my three primary casters.

Empire Army from Spring 2011

For my initial post I thought i'd showcase the very first army I every successfully completed. The bulk of this was painted three years ago, and represents my most concentrated effort in miniature painting after almost six years of flip-flopping with Fantasy and 40k armies. 

Previously I would buy massive amounts of second-hand miniatures, assemble them as needed, and never paint them or game with them. After they sat around for a requisite 6-8 months I’d sell them off, cursing myself for a fool and vowing not to buy any more. Despite being completed, this particular army never saw action up until fall of last year, and even then only 3-4 games.

You can clearly see I’m uncomfortable with color consistency and highlighting. The yellow is particularly variable among the different models.

One issue I have with Warhammer and army-scale games more generally is having to paint scads of bog-standard line troops (who happen to be annoyingly detailed in empire armies, especially under a white basecoat) and only getting one or two really spectacular models to paint. All things considered I think this hero turned out quite well considering the level of my painting, although it feels like he lacks highlights.

I’m actually still really happy with the way this base on the cannon turned out, although the crew leaves much to be desired.

As it stands I’ll be returning to this army after many years apart from it to add a new regiment of halberdiers, some more handgunners, and some knights. I imagine I’ll soon have some pretty good comparison shots between the different levels of my painting!